Classroom observations can become overly focused on our unconscious bias toward traditional signs of quality teaching and learning. Observers can focus on teaching moves and the appearance of engagement but miss what matters most: are students making sense of the learning. Experienced educator, Dr. Michael McDowell shares the need to “flip” our view in observation to look past surface signals of teaching and learning rituals and perhaps disrupt them.

Read “Flipping the Lens on Classroom Observations With the ‘Inside-Out’ Method” here.

Visit the Hinge Education website and connect with Michael 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.

[00:00:29.960] – Steve
Inside out versus outside in classroom observations. Dr. Michael McDowell is joining our podcast today. He is a prolific educational author and the co-founder of Hinge Education, an organization providing professional learning opportunities for educators both nationally and internationally. Dr. McDowell’s experience extends from classroom teacher, academic and athletic coach, to school principal, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and superintendent. I extended an invitation to Michael when I read his Edutopia article, “Flipping the Lens on Classroom Observations with the Inside-Out Method.” I’m looking forward to learning more about how his insights can impact our work with coaching for continuous teacher growth that generates increasing student success. Welcome, Michael.

[00:01:30.390] – Michael
Hi, Steve. Great to be with you.

[00:01:31.950] – Steve
So why don’t we set the stage with just a quick description of inside-out observation and maybe how your experiences as a teacher and a coach and a school administrator led you to be thinking about the inside-out process?

[00:01:52.610] – Michael
I think there’s a couple things that I think about, Steve, when I think about kind of the outside-in approach. So one is, I think it’s just so judgment-laden. So when I think about going into a classroom and I’m going to go watch a teacher teach, there’s just this immediate kind of power dynamic, no matter what role I’m in. So whether it’s a teacher with a teacher, it’s I’m a student I’m a coach, I’m an administrator, there’s just immediately, there must be some kind of judgment on whether I’m doing the right particular types of techniques. And to me, that’s never the type of fertile ground that we want to have to be able to have a productive conversation afterwards on like what worked and what didn’t work. And from a developmental standpoint, from a progressive standpoint, I want to find a way that power is shared, that we’re coming together to learn together. And I think for me, that’s always the place I’m coming into. From a level of observation of, can we come into this to both learn together? I want to learn the great moves, the successful things that you’ve done, and at the same time, I want to be able to provide some, a lens to some of the things that you might not have been able to see that might be able to strengthen that type of conversation.

[00:02:56.950] – Michael
And I think that to me is the key that we have to look at when we go into classrooms. So I would say that’s kind of the impetus of this particular kind of work when we start with, I’m going to watch the teacher and then go to the student. I think there’s just a, there’s a natural sense of they’re judging me. UI don’t think that’s anyone’s necessary, like a fault of someone on their own, but I think that’s just a natural part of am I doing something right or wrong. And as soon as we’re in that kind of dichotomous kind of mental mode, I don’t think great, I don’t think that tends towards goodness. And so I think that’s the idea.

[00:03:27.710] – Steve
Yeah, I’ve historically said almost impossible for teacher evaluation to lead to growth.

[00:03:37.660] – Michael
Yeah, I agree.

[00:03:38.860] – Steve
For growth to occur, or the most growth is going to occur when the person is vulnerable. And making yourself vulnerable in an evaluation setting, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

[00:03:54.970] – Michael
And I would just add, I think the person coming in for that observation also needs to be vulnerable, right? Like, it’s a mutual level of vulnerability. And I think that’s the impetus of why I wrote the article, to say I’m going to come in and I’m going to be looking at what is the experience of students. And a lot of this falls to some pretty significant research that, that I lean on, Graham Nuthall’s work, Robert Coe’s work around proxies of learning, a lot of things that we just can’t see in the classroom that— and also in the article I talk about Dan Lordi’s work of the apprenticeship of observation, where we’ve Wbeen in classrooms like since we were little, like since we were like 4 or 5. And so we have all of these rituals and all these experiences that mask certain things that are happening in the classroom that almost no one can see. So for me coming into a classroom and saying, I’m going to go and kind of lift up the hood and say like, what’s going on in there, knowing you can’t necessarily see it, I might not see some of it, but then we can share out some of that and say like, what do we learn from that?

[00:04:56.260] – Michael
To me, I think it tends towards more effective conversations that can actually not only improve the learning for students and that teacher, but also the person that’s coming into the classroom be like, huh, I wonder what that’s like in my own classroom or in my own school or in my— or across the system. And I think that leads to powerful inquiry, that leads to the kind of growth we want to see.

[00:05:17.160] – Steve
When you and I spoke earlier and kind of talked about doing the, uh, the podcast, you mentioned Graham Nuthall’s, work in the hidden lives of learners. Would you just describe a couple of insights that you, that you took from that that have impacted you?

[00:05:35.880] – Michael
Sure. I was, I would say one of the researchers that probably stopped me in my tracks early on when I was an administrator was John Hattie’s visible learning work. And I read the book, I went, I listened to John Hattie present in New Zealand and when he first started coming to the United States, and he kept bringing up Graham Nuthall’s work, “The Hidden Lives of Learners.” And if you think about the visible learning story, really the prequel is Graham Nuthall’s work. And Graham Nuthall, his fundamental work was, hey, we’ve got all these rituals in this classroom and what’s happening with the lives of learners? And so he put these lapel mics on students’ lapels and just listened to them speak for years and just capturing their experience. And what he found is the majority of the classroom is hidden from us. There’s like 3 worlds that are happening. It’s the social, it’s that kind of the classroom world that we can see a little bit of it. There’s the peer-to-peer world where they’re whispering, where sometimes as teachers we can detect some of it. And then there’s just the world of the student in their own mind that we can’t depict what’s happening in that class.

[00:06:33.590] – Michael
So 80% of the classroom is fundamentally hidden from us. 80% of the feedback that kids give and receive are largely from their friends, and most of that feedback is wrong. So teachers could be doing all this great stuff, and then there’s this other world that’s going on underneath it. That to me was so powerful because like John Hattie’s work was like, well, how do you make that visible from a teacher lens and from, and helping students be able to visualize and detect like, oh, hey, maybe that information that you’re sharing with me is incorrect, or maybe I’ll illustrate for you like, hey, this is where I’m going in my learning. This is where I am. This is what’s next. Like, how do I make that a little bit more visible? I looked at that work to say, what does that mean for me if I’m a coach or if I’m an administrator and I go in the classroom and I’m like, the teacher is doing great things. The question is, are kids with them when they’re doing great things? Because the number of classrooms, Steve, I go in and like, the teacher’s crushing it. Like, if you have like a teacher awesomeness rubric, it’s like tick, tick, tick, right?

[00:07:27.160] – Michael
And I go to the kids, I’m like, “hey, is the teacher clear?” And they’re like, “they’re super clear.” And I’m like, “what are we learning?” They’re like, “I have no idea.” And it’s like, and that to me, that relationship between our teachers doing great things and our students with them is the really interesting tension I want to be a part of. And I think that’s what Graham his work, Dr. Nuthall’s work illustrated for me is like, wow, there’s a lot going on that we could illuminate a little bit of it without judgment and say, hey, these 5 students said your work was really clear and yet they didn’t connect with it. What do you think that means for you? And I think that comes to a place where it’s like, it’s gonna be hidden in my classroom too. It’ll be hidden in my staff meeting, right? Like that to me is the key. And that’s what I think, that’s what Dr. Nuthall really illuminated for me. And that was one of the most powerful shifts for me to think about the way I lead and coach versus the way I did it in the past.

[00:08:21.790] – Steve
So when you’re looking at the Inside-Out method, how do you describe the observer’s role?

[00:08:29.590] – Michael
I would describe it as the observer’s role is to go in and to document the types of things that we can’t normally see. So I’m coming in to talk to students on what I would say are like core fundamental questions that have a pretty high impact on student learning. So number 1, we just talked about. Are students with you when you’re doing the great things that you’re doing? So for me, that’s like the hunt for clarity. Are the students clear? You’re clear as a teacher with a credential or with advanced degrees and all of these things and all the stuff I see up on the walls, likely you are very clear. The question is, are students – are they with you with that level of clarity? And sometimes you can detect that as a teacher, but you also like, you can do the greatest checking and responding to understanding in the world, and 2 minutes later, kids can be like, squirrel, and not be with you, right? So for me, if I’m going in as an observer and I document a little bit of that and said, hey, this is what I noticed, or here’s, you know, I asked 5 students, 3 of them said they understood where we are with clarity, 2 didn’t.

[00:09:29.580] – Michael
What do you take from that? And for me, I’m really interested in a teacher’s interpretation. So for me, it’s like setting up the conversation. It’s giving people the evidence to say, so based on this evidence, what do you take from that? And then I’m coming into it not from judgment, not saying I think this is this means. I’m doing that is to say, I think this will launch into a really interesting conversation that is anchored around something that is high impact for kids that teachers do really care about. I mean, they want kids to be with them, like, as an example. I think that is the core purpose of going in to do classroom observations.

[00:10:05.580] – Steve
So is there a skill set the observer needs to work on developing?

[00:10:11.160] – Michael
Yeah, I think there’s a couple things. So one is – I think one key skill set for us is, do we know what we’re looking for? So what are those things that have a substantial impact? So for me, if I was to create a model around it, it would be: Are kids with you? Are they working as hard as you when it comes to feedback? Are they giving each other consistent feedback, and is it accurate between students? Do students know what to do when they don’t know what to do? I think that would be an interesting place. Are they progressing across levels of complexity? So knowing things, relating things, applying things. Are we— so I think one, it’s how do we capture some evidence around that? I think that would be a skill set. I think a skill set would be a protocol that you can effectively structure the conversation with a teacher. So to me, I go in from the what, like, what do we see from the students? And I’m just documenting that without judgment. Then for me, working with a teacher, it’s so what, what are the inferences from that?

[00:11:05.980] – Michael
What does that drive you to interpret, to understand? And I want to be a part of that conversation so I can help coach into what can we control, what can we not control? What’s small and doable for you? And then going into the now what. So now what for you? What does that mean for you? So I think having a structured protocol, and then the last kind of bucket for me is that you have some norms that you use, some agreements that you use when you’re working with others, but also as a disposition to stay in the middle. So you’re not telling people what to do, right? You’re also not saying go figure it out. You’re in the middle of that tension between knowing and doing. To help those people who are running the work actually be able to implement that. And I think there’s a set of agreements that we use. Like, I’ll give one quick example, and that is when I go into a space where I’m trying to be in the middle between knowing and doing, one agreement that I use is speak like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong. So I’ll say, I think this might be happening.

[00:12:03.340] – Michael
Do you see it differently? And so it’s really important for me not to either just tell you my position. But equally, it’s not helpful if I just give you a question and I have an idea behind here because humans know that. They know that you have an idea and you’re not going to share it because you’re just going to use inquiry to try to drive to that thinking. And humans are just really good at detecting that stuff. So to me, it’s like, speak like you’re right, listen like you’re wrong, focus on interests, not positions, test assumptions. These things I think are powerful – they are powerful agreements to use as a strategy, but they are also a disposition that we need to have as humans to say, I’m not the one that has to do the work, and yet I am a part of it.

[00:12:45.520] – Steve
So what do the teachers have to learn to make the most from this process?

[00:12:52.380] – Michael
I mean, I think part of it is, I think that what a teacher has to be willing to do and to engage in is withhold buy-in and focus on behaving their way into buy-in. Like, let’s try this a few times. And as opposed to like, let me try to convince you of this whole process of inside out. To me, I think trust is forged by doing the work. And trust is really easy to break. But what I wouldn’t do is I wouldn’t spend a lot of time going through like, here’s the whole process. And now we have a rubric right now. Now here’s the 12-day workshop. It’s like, let’s just start with, I’m going to go and I’m going to talk to 2 students. And then let’s come back and like, let’s talk about like, here’s what I noticed from the 2 students. And I could have a teacher being like, well, that’s not a full sample size. It’s like, I’m not talking about the whole class. I’m not judging you. To me, it’s like, I noticed these from these 2 students. What’s your take from that? So that I can get kind of an interpretation.

[00:13:42.980] – Michael
What do you think might be a next step with these 2 students? What do you think this might mean for you? And that gives me a good sense of where is that teacher in terms of their thinking around this work and helping them get to this place like, I’m not coming in to judge you. I’m coming in to talk about the hidden lives of learners and what we can do to actually make sure that we’re more in tune with that particular kind of work to the best of our ability, knowing how hard and how urgent a classroom is and how many moving parts are hidden. How can we bring some of that out to have that conversation? So I think the key for a teacher is to give it some time to let this thing grow. And over time, I think what people will do is they’ll be like, yeah, this was actually a pretty helpful process. But what I wouldn’t do is the opposite, which is, I have to convince people to buy into a whole process, be like, I’m just going to come to your classroom to look at students. I’m not going to look at you.

[00:14:30.290] – Michael
And then I just want to talk about, here are two students, what did you notice from that? I think starting that, to me, is the key to this particular kind of work. Behave your way into buy-in.

[00:14:39.930] – Steve
So as I’m listening to you, I’m trying to figure out— I hear trust is being critical, that you can develop that environment. And I guess the double vulnerability is what caused the growth. Then as I’m listening, I’m trying to figure out how much of this has to be developed by the coach and the principal. And if they leave and a new person comes, can you get this systematized within a building, or is it—

[00:15:12.380] – Michael
I think so.

[00:15:13.080] – Steve
What has to happen for it to become— I guess it’s part of the culture, huh?

[00:15:18.850] – Michael
I think so. So I always go back to Clayton Christensen’s work where he talks about you can’t change a culture by changing a culture. You change a culture by changing the task. His whole idea was that cultures are built on what are routine problems that we’re solving. So what problems we’ve been solving in the past is we need to make sure our teachers are really great at doing the X, Y, and Z. And to me, it’s like, I don’t think that’s the right task. That’s a task of are teachers proficient when we know that really what we’re looking at is the impact of student learning relative to what teachers are doing and seeing, and that that is a growth process, not a proficiency process, in my opinion. There’s obviously things that we can talk about with just like, just general competency, but I’m talking about like 95% of all educators. Really, we’ve got to change the task. The task to me is where are students relative to the great work you’re doing? I’m assuming you’re doing great work. Here’s where the students are. What does that mean for you? So that’s the task. And I think part of it is you have to change that task and then a culture shifts.

[00:16:20.100] – Michael
What I would not do is try to spend a ton of time on like, we’re going to change the culture, we’re going to change the culture. And then it’s like, I’m coming in to watch you. It’s like, okay, well, that’s not going to, that’s not going to really work. The second thing what I would say is, yes, I think what you can do, so going back to kind of those 3 buckets on what are the problems that we’re trying to work, what is the data we’re trying to go after? That makes a high impact. Number 2, using a protocol in which we look at data. And then 3, what are those agreements or norms we use? I think you can systematize that. I think the challenge – when you plug someone new in is that you also have to, over time, embody that work, right? It is not just a strategy. It is not like inquiry to me is not just a method. It is a disposition. I am engaging in my mental space. I am inquiring. And part of someone who is an inquirer also is an advocate. They advocate for certain things.

[00:17:12.090] – Michael
They share ideas that they have, but they’re in that space and they are like legitimately here to— I am not the one with the power. I am here to share power with someone else. And I think that takes time. So yes, you can bring someone in and start to bring in those routines, but those individuals need to take a lot of time to cultivate actually living and breathing that particular kind of work.

[00:17:35.800] – Steve
So how close does it come to what we’re wanting teachers to do with kids?

[00:17:42.220] – Michael
I think it’s very close.

[00:17:44.790] – Steve
That’s what I’m hearing.

[00:17:46.390] – Michael
I love what you’re just saying, Steve, and how you moved it there, because to me, the— I think the fundamental challenge of most education is we think in dichotomies, right? Big pendulum swings, big shifts to I have the power, you don’t have the power. I’m a lecturer, you take notes. And then I’m seeing a lot in the last couple of years of we’re going to put it on kids. Kids are going to figure it out, right? They’re going to go to vertical boards and try to figure out mathematics. We’re going to give them really rich problems and they’re going to figure it out. The kids are like, “uh, I don’t know how to do that.” So hopefully I can be in a group where people work on that. And what’s happened is we like, we just throw power around and every kid knows. You can take that power back as soon as you want, as a teacher. I think we really have to authentically think about what’s that space in the middle. And to me, the space in the middle, and this goes back to like Arturson Shone’s work, this goes to Roger Schwarz’s work where he wrote this beautiful book called, “The Skilled Facilitator.”

[00:18:43.640] – Michael
And he said, this is about mutual learning. We are going to learn together. And I think to your point, it’s when we talk about kids, if you want students to have agency, you need to show your agency as well. Let’s both be agents of learning and of impact. And I think it’s the same with coaching.

[00:19:01.030] – Steve
As we look to wrap up here, I pulled a statement from your article that I thought might be a summary statement. So see if you— how you respond to it. “These observations are not about catching gaps, they’re about clarifying next instructional moves while there’s still time to act.”

[00:19:19.660] – Michael
I think there’s two parts to that. I think for me, the most important thing for educators is looking at things that are small and doable that they can move forward with and not relying on big conceptual remarks, frameworks, rubrics, things like that. It’s like, okay, so given this, what’s a small action that I could go take tomorrow that either reinforces what I’ve done today, or it might be a small shift. And to me, when I’m coaching, I’m not coming in to say, look, all this trust stuff is great, but at the end of the day, what I’m really trying to find out is like where you’re good and where you’re off. That is not the framing that we should be. Now, a teacher might say, I have a gap. That’s what I want to work on. Great. But they might, but it may not be a gap. It may be like, “oh, I’m doing pretty well.” I could still get 1% better tomorrow. And here’s the small shift that I want to make. So my point on that was when we come in, we should not be framing things from a deficit standpoint. We shouldn’t be framing things as like everything is about a gap analysis.

[00:20:14.410] – Michael
Sometimes it is, but to me, it’s like, that’s going to come through the conversation. That’s the power of— it’s a human endeavor, teaching and coaching. And to me, it’s like, something will come out of that. It could be a new venture. It could be, yes, there’s a shortfall. It could be improvement. It could be starting something new. But that has to come through from that observation. That’s the spark. They’re the flame. And to me, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.

[00:20:39.990] – Steve
Closing thoughts you’d like to share before we close out?

[00:20:43.690] – Michael
Well, I mean, a couple things. Steve, I love the way, in this podcast, you brought it to, like, hey, this is kind of like what we want to see with teachers and with students. And to me, it’s like, if we know that the things that have the highest impact in learning would happen with adults or with students, we should see that cascading across any mechanism. A staff meeting should be the same. If whatever a principal is modeling in a staff meeting, you’re gonna see that in the classroom, because that’s the instructional leader. That’s what we should do. And I think that your point around that, I think is key. So I think as people are listening to this, whatever role you’re sitting in, it’s to say, this is the same type of work we should be coming to this with whatever role and in whatever space that we’re in. And so I just wanted to end with like, I really appreciated that perspective and really enjoyed the conversation. This was super fun.

[00:21:29.820] – Steve
Well, I was looking forward to this when I read your article and then even more when we talked in advance, and it’s all lived up to it. Michael, what’s the best way for listeners to be able to follow up with you? I’ll put a link to your article in the podcast lead-in, but if they want to check some of the work you’re doing and bring any questions to you, what’s the best way?

[00:21:57.680] – Michael
Yeah, thanks, Steve. The best way to get a hold of us would be through hingeeducation.org. That’s our website, and you can go on there and you can access the work that we’re doing and the books, the resources. You can also find us at Edutopia. I do a lot of writing with Edutopia, and I’m also on LinkedIn. So if you want to join the network and then we can go back and forth, hose would be 3, I think, easy ways to do that work.

[00:22:20.140] – Steve
Well, I’ll be continuing to follow you, and I’ll put those links in the podcast lead-in as well. Thanks so much.

[00:22:26.780] – Michael
Thanks, Steve. You too. Appreciate it.

[00:22:30.520] – 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.

 

 

Most teachers recognize that students must pass through discomfort to grow. When learners are challenged with new ideas, unfamiliar skills, or tasks that stretch beyond their current ability, it’s natural for them to feel uncertain, frustrated, or even resistant. This discomfort is not a sign that something is wrong. It’s a signal that real learning can occur. The “learning zone” sits between the comfort of what’s already known and the panic of being overwhelmed. When students are supported in this zone with encouragement, scaffolding, and time to reflect they begin building confidence and capability. Helping students name and understand their discomfort as part of growth fosters resilience, ownership, and a mindset that welcomes challenge, rather than avoiding it.

Discomfort is the space where a growth mindset is lived out. Carol Dweck’s concept of growth mindset centers on the belief that abilities can be developed through effort, strategy, and support rather than something fixed or predetermined. But that belief is tested the moment a learner hits difficulty. That’s when discomfort sets in; a math problem that doesn’t yield an answer, a writing task that stalls, or a challenging text to read. A growth mindset doesn’t eliminate discomfort—it gives purpose to it. It helps reframe struggle as a normal, even a necessary, part of learning rather than a sign of failure. When educators normalize discomfort and coach learners through it, they are nurturing a mindset that says, “I can get better at this, even if I’m not there yet.”

Interestingly, it’s common for the same teachers, who appreciate students’ need to push through the discomfort, to try and avoid discomfort from challenges for themselves. They step back and do not have the door open for other teachers to come in, or approach colleagues for peer coaching, or invite the instructional coach to observe and give feedback.  They want to avoid the feeling of discomfort.

I often explore discomfort in growth with Tom Gordon’s Skill Development Ladder where he describes four steps as unconsciously unskilled, consciously unskilled, consciously skilled, and unconsciously skilled as the top step. Progress is made as one moves between the steps on the ladder.

 

At the bottom of that ladder unconsciously unskilled means, “I don’t know that I don’t know.” It feels fine. Often, when I’m working with first-year teachers getting ready for that first day on their new job, I share with them that when they introduce themselves to other teachers on staff and explain that they’re a new teacher, they might see the experienced teacher giggle just a little bit. I point out that they aren’t laughing at the new teacher, they’re remembering. Everyone knows that a new teacher’s career is likely to advance an entire level somewhere on opening day. They are going to become conscious of something they don’t know.

You don’t have to be new to teaching to have this experience; all you have to do is change. I started my teaching career in grades five and six. After five years I transferred to teach first grade. That first day in first grade when I wrote my name on the board and a student laughed and said it was a funny picture, I realized there was a lot I didn’t know about teaching beginning reading. There was certainly great discomfort from recognizing what I didn’t know. Only by accepting that discomfort was I ready to grow.

On the second step of the ladder, your conscious of the fact that you don’t know something. The discomfort motivates one to move to the next level of the ladder and become consciously skilled. When you’re consciously skilled, you can implement something new or different but only if you do it consciously. When I’m doing it consciously, it means all my attention is focused on it, so it’s choppy. It doesn’t flow; it’s not natural. That produces discomfort.

By practicing something consciously and long enough, one moves to the top level of Gordon’s ladder and becomes unconsciously skilled. That label surprises some people, as it looks like Gordon is suggesting the highest level is unconscious, wouldn’t it be better to be conscious than unconscious? Actually, I do my best teaching when I do it unconsciously, with automaticity. It’s what athletes call being in the zone.

I’ve added another spot to Gordon’s work that I’ve called unconsciously talented. Teachers here perform with the automaticity of the unconsciously skilled individual but are unable to identify consciously what they have done. Like a top professional athlete who isn’t successful as a coach, the unconsciously talented teacher has trouble mentoring someone because so much of their success is based upon unconscious behaviors. Unconsciously skilled teachers can reflect and understand why a successful learning experience was successful or when things aren’t working can come back to a conscious level and identify what they could change. Whenever we are working at that conscious level, we feel a degree of discomfort. If I don’t take on that discomfort, I can’t put myself into a growth situation.

When working as a mentor, peer coach, or instructional coach, I need to know that my presence will be bringing some discomfort to the person that I’m coaching. As a person being coached, I need to recognize that unless I can get myself to enter that area of discomfort, the growth won’t occur. As leaders, our goal is to create an environment where people will feel comfortable with that discomfort. When teachers are supported in the learning zone with encouragement, scaffolding, and time to reflect they begin building confidence and capability, just like their students do.

You might share this blog with teachers in professional development or beginning their first coaching experience.

 

 

“The most significant change that a teacher can make, is to focus more on what you want your students to learn, (and how you’re going to help them to learn it), rather than on what you intend to teach. It’s about student outcomes rather than teacher objectives, and they are not the same thing.”

Liz Keable shares this statement in her post on LinkedIn, Catering For All Learners.  Liz writes, “while we have to follow a curriculum, and we need to plan accordingly, the most important aspect of our planning is ‘how’ students will learn. We need to provide activities, from which THEY can learn in a way that supports brain development, using novel experiences that form stronger memory traces.”

Liz has a background in working with vulnerable or disadvantaged students as a success coach and now promotes the need and the strategies for schools to develop students’ metacognition. She connects her comments to her study with and the writing of neuroscientist, Dr. Roy Paget.

On an earlier podcast that Liz recorded with me, she defined metacognition and its role in student success.

“ Cognition is something that we’re all born with. It’s that natural ability to learn directly from our environment, and we do it in a relatively unconscious way.  Any preschool child’s mind already contains a massive database of information that they’ve just soaked up before they ever started school. That’s the result of cognition, which is kind of all the skills that are required to gain knowledge, understand it, and use it.  Cognition is the natural, instinctive way to learn from birth onwards.

 When we put ‘meta’ on the front, it means going beyond or rising above the learning to consciously think about how you’re learning. So instead of just learning through soaking it up, it’s about having some conscious thoughts about how you’re doing that and to explore if there’s a better way of doing things and then being able to change your mind in order to get a better result.  Cognition is from birth onwards, but the part of metacognition that is conscious kicks in as the child’s reasoning skills become more relevant, which is usually around age seven.  To learn more successfully in formal education settings, metacognition is important because children are no longer learning from their own experiences. They’re being taught instead. So natural cognition is no longer enough. They need a more conscious way of engaging with a curriculum, and that’s when metacognition becomes more important.”

Here is an approach I use when exploring why schools tend to get more focused on teaching than on learning.

Teaching can be planned and organized. It can be scheduled to match content to be covered with the time available to teach it. After teaching a standard, we can assess it and document that it has been…“Taught.” That’s the rub! When we assess an objective immediately after teaching it (and often in isolation) it doesn’t document that it was learned/internalized; that measure of learning generally requires some time and deeper exploration. Learning is often messy, spontaneous, non-linear, and complex.

Keable stresses the need for consistently modelling a metacognitive approach to learning. Since metacognition includes being able to change from using one way of thinking to finding another more productive way if current results are not what we’re looking for, children need to have an understanding of how learning happens at the conscious level. She suggests making classrooms thinking zones:

“ If you encourage informed guesses, previous learning comes out into the open, students start reasoning on what they know, and even shy students will join in as long as you value each and every response. If you set the right tone within that environment, everyone discovers that even wrong answers are helpful contributions along the route to mastery.”

Guests on my podcasts and guest bloggers have frequently shared strategies that illustrate opportunities for students to learn metacognitive strategies.

Liza Garonzik shared a thinking strategy to use during class discussions. Three times during a discussion, students stop for a self-facilitated “In-REAL-Time Notes” break. Their job is to identify one idea that has been raised that has changed or challenged their thinking (might as well reinforce the idea that we engage in discussion to expand our minds – not cuddle in an echo chamber – while we were at it). Students write down their classmates’ name, summarize their idea, and explain how it “changed or challenged their thinking.” They then have the option to re-open conversation using these notes as a jumping off point. (Learn more here)

In Argumentative Writing that Listens, Erica Beaton outlines a process that has students explore articles they are using in an argumentative essay through the eyes of readers who are on the other side of the argument. She shares the impact of students learning this thinking approach.

Jackie Acree Walsch provides a great process for providing students with questions to ask themselves when a teacher provides pause time after posing a question and after hearing a classmates response to the teachers questions.(Learn more here)

Where are we, as educators, scaffolding students in learning the metacognitive skills to be empowered learners? Similarly, are we scaffolding teachers in practicing metacognitive skills to be empowered teachers?

 

 

Instructional coaches’ time spent scheduling assessments to gather data, entering the data, interpreting the data, distributing the data, and reviewing the data with teachers can be met with teachers responding with less than an enthusiastic ear.

“ …some teachers actually refer to data as ‘ the other four letter word’—time being the first one. Teachers say that pouring over reams of data takes time from where they want to be — in the classroom with students. Skepticism abounds, and concerns about how the data are used are very real. Some educators worry that the data are part of a “gotcha”, being used to evaluate their performance in unrealistic ways. What’s more, they say the data they are being required to examine has little utility in their practice.” (From: Ethical and Appropriate Data Use Requires Data Literacy)

Dr. Heather Hill, a researcher and professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, suggests that we might want to reconsider the investment of instructional coaches’ and teachers’ time in these meetings. In a review of studies that examined the impact of whole-team data discussions, Hill found that two had positive impacts, one had a negative impact, and the rest had zero impact. “Across 10 different programs which tried to see this theory in action, there were zero [showing] impacts of getting teachers to really be productive, understand what kids don’t know, and change their instruction. That convinced me we’re doing something wrong.”

Here are some practices I have found that lead to increased teachers’  conversations around data and to future teacher actions being generated.

• Data produces questions, not answers. A data wall is really a questions a wall.

Several years ago, I heard Andy Hargraves comment that schools should not be data driven but instead data rich. Data driven could suggest that the data makes decisions. I don’t want my blood pressure deciding my medication. I do want my doctor to have lots of data and then the doctor to make the decision. Teaching decisions should be made by teachers, and the richer the information they have about learners, the better.

In Data-Driven vs Data-Informed, Georgia Pollock reports:

“In data-informed decision-making, data is still an important component, but it is used as a tool to guide decision-making, rather than being the sole basis for it. Data-informed decision-making takes a more flexible approach that incorporates both quantitative data and qualitative information. In this approach, data is used to inform and support decision-making alongside other factors, such as personal expertise, professional judgment, and context. Being data-informed is beneficial in complex situations where a range of factors must be considered to make informed decisions, which is why it is usually the better approach for schools.”

• When possible, have teachers predict what assessment data will show.

I find this strategy increases the quantity and quality of questions emerging from a data review. When differences exist between predictions and data results, questions emerge. Questions are the element that leads a PLC conversation that initiates critical thinking and the design of a plan for action to generate a desired student learning outcome. Action is crucial for teachers to find value in working with data.

• Limit the amount of data that teachers are working with.

In many elementary schools I find teachers spend too much time collecting and/or examining too much data. In these cases they rarely get to action. That lack of action leads to great frustration. Instructional leaders should work with teachers to select the most important data to support decisions about crucial areas of student learning. The school improvement plan should help identify where to begin.

• Teachers need to trust the data they are working with.

I have frequently been in the middle of PLC data meetings where teachers are expressing doubt in the accuracy/validity of the data in identifying students’ learning achievement. My first response is to encourage teachers to gather assessment documents from their classrooms that illustrate “why they doubt “ and share that with their PLC colleagues for study. In some cases I’ve encouraged PLCs to create their own assessment that they feel more accurately identifies student current mastery. Leaders need to build trust in the data to gain teachers investment in the process.

• Spend PLC time studying student work samples as well as data.

My experiences are that teachers move to action more readily from conversations around student work samples. With secondary teachers, examining students’ actual work or test documents generates more “ideas” than just discussing scores. Often the questions that arise from data, especially from systemwide assessments, can be explored further and deeper with student work samples. Data creates questions that are explored with student work samples generating hypotheses around teacher actions that change student learning processes and outcomes.

As school leaders we need to continually explore how to maximize the value of teacher time that is invested in examining data.

 

School leaders’ own engagement and modeling of AI is important to support teachers in successfully initiating AI opportunities for teaching and learning. How can instructional coaches introduce and model AI use in their coaching activities with teachers? What might a school or district position statement on AI contain? Technology and design leaders from the Chester County Intermediate Unit in Pennsylvania, Josh Ecker and Kylie Hand, share the ways they support school leaders at various stages of AI implementation in their schools.

Resources: 

• Future of Work Report – LinkedIn
• Value Add of Technology on Teaching Framework
• TeachAI.org 
• AI Tools List
• Assessment Reform in the Age of AI
• Common Sense Media’s AI’s Impact on Kids

AI in Education News & Guidance

• AI for Education
• AIxEducation
• Common Sense Media AI
• EDSafeAI
• EngageAI Institute
• GSV: AI & Education
• TeachAI
• The AI Educator
• UNESCO

AI Curriculum Resources

• AI4K12
• AIedu
• Code.org/AI
• CSTA
• DataScience4Everyone
• PA’S AI Resources for CSEdWeek2023

Individuals 

• Rebecca Bultsma
• Monica Burns
• Vicki Davis
• Dr. Kip Glazer
• Dr. Josh Ecker
• Kylie Hand
• AJ Juliani
• Dr. Ethan Mollick
• Charlie Reisinger
• Dr. Demetrius Roberts
• John Spencer

Our Contact Info:

Kylie Hand, Director of Learning Design & EdTech, Chester County Intermediate Unit: KylieH@cciu.org

Personal Social Media:

• X: @mrskyliehand
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyliehand/

Josh Ecker, Learning Design Coordinator, JoshE@cciu.org

Personal Social Media:

• X: @JoshEcker
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-ecker

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.250] – Steve [Intro]

Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you have a challenge to guide continuous teacher growth that promotes student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from our experienced guests and insights that I’ve gathered across many years. I’m thrilled you’re here. Thanks for listening.

[00:00:30.450] – Steve

Supporting teachers’ exploration of AI for teaching and learning. I’m joined on this podcast with education technology leaders from the Chester County Intermediate Unit in Pennsylvania, which serves as a education service agency. Josh Ecker, who is the learning design coordinator and Kylie Hand, who is the director of learning design and educational technology. Welcome, Kylie and Josh.

[00:01:02.110] – Josh

Thanks, Steve.

[00:01:03.200] – Kylie

Thank you, Steve. Glad to be back.

[00:01:05.690] – Steve

Glad to have you here. I’m wondering for starters, if you might each take a little bit of time to describe your role at the IU and the services that you provide out to your schools.

[00:01:20.590] – Josh

Sure. So I will go first because I am, relative to Kylie, a newbie to the IU, so I’m sure she’ll be able to elaborate a little. At the IU, as the learning design coordinator, I work with a team of consultants around any projects schools are doing with learning design in general, especially ed-tech infused learning design. So a lot of work with AI, student centered learning, and any other projects and innovative work districts want to bring to their district.

[00:01:52.330] – Steve

Thanks. Kylie?

[00:01:54.240] – Kylie

To add to that, I get the real pleasure of getting to work with Josh and others, jennifer Barron, who we met in an earlier episode here to help support the integration of instructional technology across school settings. I also get to help oversee some of our certification endorsement programs and really help others to understand how learning can look through different modalities. I also get the pleasure of getting to partner and collaborate with others beyond the intermediate unit. And so Josh and I and others get to work with counterparts across our state and then really, as we develop professionally as lead learners, collaborate with others across the nation to try to stay abreast of the research, the evidence, and the growing trends within school systems, educational technology, learning design, competency based learning, and so forth.

[00:02:43.870] – Steve

Thanks and excited that you agreed to join us here with a focus on AI. So I know the initial response to the appearance of AI was in some ways a sense of fear that ranged from security concerns to students cheating. Realizing that there’s a lot to addressing those issues, I’m wondering if you can provide some elements that school leaders who are the group that tunes into this podcast, but mostly building level leaders and instructional coach leaders, some of the elements that leaders should be aware of with the entry of AI.

[00:03:29.770] – Kylie

I think we oftentimes hear of that, when I interpreted your question initially, I’m thinking of concerns, kind of liabilities, things that we should look out for the big bad wolf in this situation. But I’m thinking to maybe start with, spinning it from a more positive angle. So some of the things that school leaders should be aware of is that AI is here and that we are going to need to teach our students how to leverage it appropriately. And one of the best ways that they can do that from a proactive and positive approach, rather than that big bad wolf approach, is modeling it with their faculty. So if I’m an instructional coach, if I’m a principal, assistant principal or central office leader, I should be using AI. I should be the lead learner using AI, and then I should be modeling it with my teachers. When I’m doing something that I could very easily use AI for, I should do that and then I should almost do like the think aloud, just like we do with our students. As to here’s what I did with AI, here’s some of the pitfalls, here’s some of the limitations, here’s what prompting I used.

[00:04:31.860] – Kylie

Here’s what I found worked and didn’t work just to help onboard them a little bit. So I would say maybe start with, think about starting with modeling.

[00:04:40.530] – Steve

So just to check on that, I’m almost envisioning that an instructional coach sitting next to a teacher in a conference, whether it’s a planning conference or generating ideas to tackle an issue the teachers raised, the coach could almost turn to an AI tool there in the conference and model that interaction with AI directly for the teacher.

[00:05:06.790] – Kylie

Oh, absolutely. Pre and post conference. It doesn’t have to just be synchronous. It could be, I’m going to follow up and send you some ideas. And then when the ideas are sent, giving a nod and some credit, I got these ideas from Bard, which is Google’s AI tool, or I got these ideas from Chat GPT.

[00:05:25.710] – Steve

Yeah, I appreciate the reinforcement because I’ve been doing it virtually. I finished the conversation with the teacher and as Zoom went off, I thought, oh man, I should have looked at this. So I jumped in, pulled it up, and then sent the teacher the link for it. Josh, you want to add to that?

[00:05:43.430] – Josh

Yeah, I think on more the reactive or concerned side of the ledger that Kylie was talking about, I think about the data privacy piece, school policies, and I think as coaches, they can support teachers with keeping those considerations in mind during planning and implementation. And then on more the proactive, exciting side of AI and what it can do for our schools is really looking at how we’re future proofing our teaching and learning. And what that means is how are we preparing students for the world that they exist in now, but that they’re also going to be going into, especially after they graduate high school, whether they’re entering the workforce or going to a university somewhere. And it really is the question if AI is going to become as ubiquitous as we all see it becoming, isn’t it a disservice to our students to not build it into their school experience? So that’s kind of the general thought that I keep in mind, because if we’re not being proactive, it’s going to become a problem, whereas it can really be a solution to a lot of current problems.

[00:06:56.010] – Kylie

And to add to that, when we are future proofing our teaching and learning, that is going to look like we may need to outline our assignments by which level of AI use is acceptable in the assignment. We need to also, as teachers, as educators, realize that AI detection may not be possible. It likely is not possible, will not be possible. There’s been a lot of discussion in the higher Ed realm and in the K-12 realm around AI detectors. And really that is not something that we encourage based on the evidence and some of the biases that are actually built within those detectors. So I think a proactive approach would be to talk with your teachers if you suspect that AI use is happening on an assignment in which you clearly said, I really want you to give me your own thinking on this, because it would remove the cognitive lift of the learning process from the learner, then I think we need to have a process in place. So it shouldn’t just be, “I looked at your assignment and it looks too good. You can possibly have written this, right?” Because that is something that conveys another bias to a student from the teacher aspect, which could be really damaging to that student.

[00:08:10.420] – Kylie

So what is an honoring approach to suspected use? Is it, let’s have conversations around your product or your process, and how did you get here? And I really wanted you to learn this particular skill, and it seems like you used AI to really substitute the learning process here. So what does that actual conversation look like? I think it’s incumbent upon our coaches and our school leaders to help our teachers think through that so that they don’t have to react to it, and it’s consistent across classes and teachers.

[00:08:46.270] – Steve

So for the schools that are at the beginning stage of tapping into the benefits, what are some of the starting points that instructional coaches and administrators could be supporting in those initial steps?

[00:09:02.050] – Josh

This is a question that we’ve really – it’s been a huge focus for us both internally in our team and also in our conversations with districts and their admin teams. And we’ve been working on developing some different entry points that districts can take. We have, I want to say, around ten or so in total different entry points, and I won’t go through all of those unless you want this to be a three hour podcast, but I would say the three that if I were a building administrator or an instructional coach on a team getting this work started, the three starting points that I would really consider are modeling and sharing AI with teachers, so exposing them to the benefits and some of the potential downsides of it, discussing the impact of AI with teachers, with the school board, with the community, really, with any stakeholders who are involved in the school environment at all, and then developing an AI position statement and that can really guide the more nitty gritty work that follow.

[00:10:09.930] – Steve

Can you talk a little bit about the kinds of things that might be in a position statement?

[00:10:15.210] – Josh

Yeah. So, Kylie, I think this is something that you can really speak.

[00:10:21.530] – Kylie

Sure, so a couple of examples that come to mind would be Radner Township School District, which is a little bit outside of our county, but within our region. They put together a position, it’s like a one pager. And then the Russell group was really early on, I think as a front runner, it’s a group of universities in the UK that put together something, and it is for higher ed, but I think it could still be applicable for K-12 and it’s a little longer than one page. But really the beliefs that an organization, a school district hold about the usage of AI, I don’t want to put the words in a position statement for a district, but what is in some of these position statements is what we believe about AI usage in education. So we believe that things such as we believe AI is here to stay, we want to embrace it. That means that we’re going to have to rethink some of the assessment strategies, some of the instructional strategies, so that we can make our learning meaningful and relevant, that we’re committed to that, and that we’re going to do that through professional learning, things like that.

[00:11:30.360] – Kylie

So those are just some of the pieces for it. But I would encourage when putting together some position statements, to consider research on best practices for instruction generally that have nothing to do with AI, but also just kind of what do we want our students to be as future ready learners. So I would look at some of the research about what’s coming out from reports like LinkedIn about the future of work, so that if we are expecting to get our students career and college ready or future ready, that we are embedding that into our curriculum and instructional practices.

[00:12:08.670] – Steve

There’s an idea floating around in my head, so I want to run it by you. And I may be totally off, in which case it’s okay to tell me that, but it’s one of the reasons I like doing the podcast informally. As I was listening to you describe several pieces here in the beginning stages, I’m getting a sense that leaders dealing with AI have to take a more active engagement in the process than perhaps they have done with other technology. I’m kind of getting a read –  there was a time the principal could bring the technology coach into the school, create a technology coach position, and kind of hand that thing off to that person. But in listening to you, I’m pondering that leaders with this may need to take a more engaged front end piece.

[00:13:15.110] – Kylie

I would echo that. I think that’s absolutely true. AI is something that really affects all of us, and I think it brings to light because it’s not that AI in general is a new technology, but the access to it, for a lay consumer like myself to be able to access it so widely, has really changed. And it brings to light a lot of new questions and kind of quandaries around ethics and integrity and it brings to light some questions as to what we’re teaching our students. Do we need to teach them in the same way? And if not, then how are we teaching them and what now new things do we need to teach them? So it begs a lot of new questions that we may not have had to grapple with when another new technology came out. One common, similar thread, I might say, would maybe be social media. When social media came out, that was something that was pretty widespread and at the time, sometimes schools would say, oh, well, that’s something that happens outside of the school walls. But then, as we see now in present day, it really bleeds into the school day and is something that we sometimes and oftentimes will encourage students to use, but use in a way that’s judicious and careful and responsible.

[00:14:40.270] – Josh

Yeah, I think that connection to social media is really good. And I would say in general, schools and districts aren’t always the most nimble organizations. They’re not always used to reacting something very quickly and being proactive because there are so many stakeholders, and it’s really important to get that buy in with big decisions. But I think with how quickly generative AI has become a major factor in all of our lives and in the school setting, administrators have to be involved because it takes everyone staying involved and committed to make these decisions more quickly than you might have to make them with other technology or other issues or new things that might arise.

[00:15:24.190] – Steve

So I had asked you about the schools that were at the beginning, implementation piece here or exploration piece and I’m wondering if you’d spend a little time taking us to the other end of that continuum. Are you working with some schools, some educators who kind of jumped in with both feet early on? I’d love to hear what some of those places are making happening for students. And you got thoughts of what’s going to come after that possibility thinking for us.

[00:16:00.490] – Kylie

Yeah, so the school districts that we have seen related to your previous question, the ones that are the front runners are the ones where the leaders took the bull by the horns and just wanted to move forward with this kind of seeing what Josh shared, things are changing so rapidly. It is so hard in a school setting because there are so many competing initiatives, mandates, needs, day to day operations, serving the community, and we understand time is a factor. So one of the things, though, that we’ve seen that’s been helpful is not that the leader themselves is doing all the work, but that they have created these stakeholder groups. And I think once they create these stakeholder groups, identify some of the problems, the issues, the opportunities, then what we’ve seen, it’s almost like a very quick domino effect. Well, if we want to use it, well, what tools do we use? Well, how do we vet those tools? What are the possibilities with AI? Okay, now that I’ve gotten this in the teacher’s hands, what do we want students to use? Well, if we want them to use it, we have to vet the tool.

[00:17:02.880] – Kylie

We have to look at the privacy concerns. We have to consider if the privacy says that it’s for students 18 and under but with parent consent, well, now we have to put in some kind of process. Maybe it’s a permission slip process, which we’ve seen some of our school districts use to use a particular AI tool. And now if I’m using AI tools, I need to teach the safe and responsible use to my students. And then if I’m going to do that, then I have to articulate the guidelines for a particular assignment. When should and shouldn’t they use it? How should they cite it? So once you start going, it then seems to progress quite naturally, and we’ve seen this happen in a few different school districts. I think some districts are just a little resistant because they know once they pull off the band aid, that it’s just going to continue these additional conversations. But we hope that they’re productive conversations. It’s just that sometimes the unknown can be a bit scary and daunting and overwhelming. And that’s why folks like Josh and I exist, so that if you are concerned about how to go down the path, or you want some thought partners or guidance, we can share some of that with school districts as partners.

[00:18:15.830] – Josh

And building off of what Kylie said, there are a couple things in particular we’ve done with some of those earlier adopters. One is there’s a framework called the value add of technology on teaching, which is essentially an evaluation tool for new technologies a school might want to bring in, or it could even be used by individual teachers. And we really like this tool because it is a little more concrete, I would say, than some of the other evaluative tools out there. It really allows teachers or coaches or administrators to think about the impact of the tool in the classroom or the impact on learning. So that framework has been helpful so far for the districts we’ve introduced it to. And then a project I’m thinking of in particular that we worked with the district on is developing a course for students to understand generative AI, its history, and also what appropriate use looks like. So that’s really building their capacity to use it appropriately and effectively as that district starts to bring it more into their day to day instruction.

[00:19:29.800] – Steve

That’s very cool. Is that secondary level? Is that part of a course or is it a course stands on its own?

[00:19:40.610] – Josh

It’s a micro course. So it’s like a 1 hour course broken up into 3, 20 minutes segments for grades nine through twelve. And I believe they gave the students a time frame to complete it. So I think it’s being completed during study hall or some kind of other time during the school day, but I don’t think it’s part of their core contact classes.

[00:20:05.680] – Steve

Got you. So can you think of one of the places that you’ve worked with where you can kind of point us and say, here’s a pretty neat picture of students getting engaged in the learning process in a way that wasn’t happening, at least not at the depth or the level that AI has made the opportunity for it to happen at? Something come to mind with that?

[00:20:36.470] – Kylie

I would say that just speaking to the example Josh gave, we had a lot of feedback from students about the course as part of the assessment in the course where they said, I thought I knew a lot about AI, or I thought I knew what AI was, how it worked, but I realized I really didn’t. And so I think that one of the things that we get to do when we talk about AI with students is help them to understand some of the concepts of computational thinking and algorithmic literature, understanding that there are these certain patterns to AI that we can decompose our assignments into specific prompts to get us to a specific outcome that we might be looking for. So I think a lot of our schools that we’re working with are front running, are just starting the use of AI, which is exciting, but they’re doing it in a way that is measured and cautious. And I think that’s a strong approach because there are so many tools and things out there, and I think we need to – while students may be using them already outside of the school day, I think giving students a strong foundation in how AI generally works, and then how it can be implemented within a structured environment, within a particular set of tools, I think is a way to go so that they get comfortable and then can apply those in the real world settings to the other things that they may or may not be using.

[00:22:08.830] – Josh

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, Kylie. It feels like districts, the early adopting districts, are just on sort of the brink of introducing that in classrooms for students in a lot of ways. What I’m hoping to see is some of those really personalized tutoring tools come into place. So things like Conmigo and I think Duolingo also has some Chat GPT integration. So that, know, if I was thinking of myself being in the classroom, those are the tools I would be most excited about getting in the hands of students.

[00:22:43.930] – Kylie

To add to that, I was talking with a school leader who was saying that one of their art teachers at the high school level is going to be creating a course for the following school year around different media that can be generated through AI. So it may look like, Steve, really just updating existing curriculums as well and looking for inroads and that’s one of the suggestions we have for those early entry points for embracing AI, is digital media curriculum. Anything that is related to steam curriculum, or anything related to even writing. Any areas where AI can very seamlessly be integrated, even a social studies class around where you’re talking about debate or ethics or social justice or something like that. There’s very easy ways to embed conversations around AI and get students to start thinking about algorithmic literacies that they’ll need to have in their future. One of the things that I’m really excited about, I know you had mentioned, where do you see schools that are really far ahead going? And so I can’t say that I personally know of schools like this, but one of the things that a speaker we had brought in to the IU who was on a panel for us, her name is Vicki Davis and she runs some blogs and things of her own.

[00:24:06.730] – Kylie

She had said back in August when we had her speak that students are going to need to be supervisors of AI and that they’re going to need to be managers. And I really hadn’t at that point in time made the connection. She was obviously much further than me, but I hadn’t made the connection that there are these one thing area of generative AI that’s growing is this autonomous AI. And Josh and I just have some brief experience using some of these tools ourselves, but students are going to have access to AI that’s going to act on their behalf and that’s going to be able to complete a set of goals or tasks that a student kind of assigns to them. And so one of the things I’m interested to see is how can we create self directed, self regulated learners that can manage and supervise AI. I think that’ll be really neat. And then I think that just – the things that AI can do to help people who may have an exceptionality, who may speak a different language or who may be learning a different language, I think that there are so many new opportunities about how we can learn that just excite me and feel like will make everything so much easier.

[00:25:28.420] – Kylie

Josh and I were talking about our CTE program at the Chester County Intermediate Unit and how rather than just thinking of an abstract concept of electrical engineering and how it works, we can use AI, AR, VR to help students to actually see and manipulate it in a digital space, which is really neat.

[00:25:51.510] – Steve

So I’ve been doing my pondering about whether the possibility is there for AI to really change schools and know that I speak this as a person who started teaching 50 years ago. So I’ve been through the process of change a lot of times that didn’t really lead to change. And as you were talking, Kylie, there’s a word that has been important in my work and that is getting us less focused on teaching and more focused on learning. And I think I was hearing a piece of that in your description of the power that AI could bring us. Am I on the right track there?

[00:26:48.650] – Kylie

Oh, definitely. It’s bringing to light right now, like I had mentioned earlier, a lot of new questions about teaching and learning that we maybe haven’t had to ask ourselves all that frequently, but when we are, for example, if a student, I was reading an article from a student’s perspective about using Chat GPT to work on an assignment, and the quote in the article was something along the lines of, yeah, Chat GPT smashed my assignment in 5 seconds. And so if a student can use AI to do an assignment in 5 seconds, should that be the assignment? And again, maybe we do need to put some parameters and say, actually it is really valuable for you to do this assignment? We really don’t want you to use AI. But it does bring to light questions of, hey, if AI can do this assignment, maybe we can ask our students to do an alternative assignment, which actually could be at a deeper level of thinking than we have in the past.

[00:27:52.270] – Steve

Driving the learning further.

[00:27:55.390] – Josh

I think in some ways, the boom of generative AI is similar to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the sense that there are these seismic shifts in the world, and it’s forcing us to really examine our practices in schools and districts that really we probably should have been looking at a long time ago but we didn’t really need know because everything was kind of steady and moving. I think, you know, it really is, Steve, like you were saying, it’s a chance to look at what school is and how we can make it better and different. And again, it’s not necessarily that AI itself is the only reason that we need to make that change, but it’s really kind of maybe forcing that change in a way it wasn’t before, and making us think about what is the purpose and value of schools in the 21st century?

[00:28:58.930] – Kylie

That’s a great example, a note of encouragement. I think initially there were questions about will AI replace jobs, will they replace teachers? And there are going to be some positions that are disrupted in industry based on all the projections I’ve read from LinkedIn and whatnot, about different jobs and different industries. But I think the one thing that makes teaching resilient is the relationships that we have with our students. And I do think though, that there can be a shift in teaching is the teacher being the sole content provider and the knowledge bearer. And if we have an AI tool that is helping a student to learn, okay, we’ll have to monitor the level of accuracy, depth, screen time, things like that, but does it free up the teacher then to really actually be more relationally connected to students as coaches, as mentors, as goal setters and encouragers? And maybe that actually provides a new opportunity that we didn’t have in the past, which I actually think could be more beneficial to our students in some ways. And I’m personally really excited about.

[00:30:20.670] – Steve

I’ve been playing with the term, “capacity builder” as the role for the teacher.

[00:30:26.910] – Kylie

What do you mean by capacity builder for…

[00:30:31.410] – Steve

Yeah, coaching the student’s capacity and certainly relationship being a large part of that. A whole lot of years back, when technology was first beginning to show up in classrooms, there was a university professor I worked with and his presentation to teachers and it goes back to influence the title I use here of the teacher having a partner with the technology. And his description was that if you had a co teacher who could do what the technology could do, then you wouldn’t choose to try and outdo them. If you had a teacher that had this expertise as your colleague, you’d find another role for you to play. And that in many ways that early sign of technology was creating that opportunity for the teacher. There’s a whole different set of roles that can be taken on here which create the stage for student learning potential to happen beyond the teacher being the source of putting the teaching out. It’s why I’ve been driven by that concept of getting more focused on learning than on teaching.

[00:31:51.770] – Kylie

Yeah, I think that has profound implications and seems like a really wise way to intentionally think about this.

[00:32:00.190] – Steve

So any last words of encouragement you’d like to lay out here for instructional coaches and school level leaders listening in?

[00:32:10.770] – Josh

I would say that it is a really exciting time to be involved in education. There’s a lot of innovation potential here with AI and even though that can be overwhelming and it can feel like too much to manage at times, it is something that is overall going to be good for students as long as we’re proactive with it. So that would be my kind of big picture message. And then within that it’s just if you’re a coach, if you’re an administrator, start think about what you’re doing in your own practice with AI and then that’ll start to help you find opportunities to bring it to students as well.

[00:32:56.590] – Kylie

I would say continue to be a lead learner. This is going to continue to change and there is too much knowledge and too much advancement happening over days with these tools and with the options for anyone to really have – I mean, if somebody is able to stay on top of all of these changes, I would like to meet them, maybe news outlets and whatnot, but it is very challenging. So I would say, try to build a professional learning community around you, whether that be in person with colleagues that you know, or even I feel like I have built a really wonderful professional learning community digitally. It could be through following folks who have different entry points into AI. It could be following Josh, myself, others, the Chester County Intermediate Unit. But really try to give yourself opportunity to learn with others in some capacity because it can be so overwhelming if you are the sole provider of kind of the AI implementation in your school or district, but know that there are others who can be thought partners. And also, I just want to mention, don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email or give us a follow or send us a message online.

[00:34:19.240] – Kylie

We love working with all schools around the country, around the state, so feel free to reach out to us anytime and we’re happy to be thought partners with you.

[00:34:30.400] – Steve

Perfect. We go international, too. That’s all right for you?

[00:34:32.610] – Kylie

Part of our mission at the Chester County Intermediate Unit is to reach Chester County, which is in Pennsylvania and beyond. So, yeah, we haven’t had a huge footprint at that point, internationally, taking over the globe, but we would love to work with anyone, anywhere. And we actually have gotten a lot of guidance from folks internationally, like Australia, like Josh said, this is something that we are all grappling with and is exciting because it really does unite us all.

[00:35:08.060] – Steve

So if I post your emails at the IU, best way for people to connect?

[00:35:16.490] – Kylie

Yeah. That’s the best way for them to connect with us. And then we also are posting things on the Chester County Intermediate Unit social media and our personal social medias, which we can give you a link to for the show notes as well.

[00:35:27.340] – Steve

Terrific, terrific. Well, thanks so much, folks. Really appreciate you being with us.

[00:35:33.570] – Kylie

Yeah, it was a real pleasure. Thanks for letting us get to chat with you about this.

[00:35:36.930] – Josh

It was. Thanks, Steve.

[00:35:40.210] – 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.

At each end and start of the calendar year, I take a break from posting a new blog and provide a revisit to some of my thinking that has appeared across the years. This blog focuses on some history. The following video (6 minutes) provides a look at my initial experiences with coaching; from my student teaching experiences to my learning days coaching and being coached.

What follows are three podcasts (transcripts and links available) that look at the work of educators/authors who provided insights shaping my understanding and the presentations that I have provided to many educators across the years.

In this episode, I focused on Joellen Killion’s explanation of the importance of “coaching heavy.” She reminds us that results build relationships.

https://barkleypd.com/blog/podcast-foundations-for-instructional-coaching-episode-1-heavy-coaching/

Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers’ exploration of the impact of coaching on the transfer of workshop skills to embedded classroom success was an important early footing for me.

https://barkleypd.com/blog/podcast-foundations-for-instructional-coaching-episode-ii-coaching-to-extend-professional-development/

Tom Gordon, the originator of Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training identified these learning stages which provide a helpful understanding for those of us coaching and being coached.

https://barkleypd.com/blog/podcast-foundations-for-instructional-coaching-episode-iii-the-four-learning-states-gordons-ladder/

Wishing you the best as you hopefully relax and renew for the year ahead. As educators, you impact the future!