Podcast: What Earns Your Teachers’ Trust in a Professional Learning Session?

Allison Rodman, the founder of The Learning Loop, explores how we create professional learning where trust sets the stage for vulnerability – a key to teacher learning. Professional learning is an ongoing daily process that should be supported by what might be labeled a professional development workshop. Effective professional learning positively impacts student learning outcomes. What commitments need to be held by district level staff, building leaders, instructional coaches as well as teachers?

Find Allie at The Learning Loop.

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.

[00:00:29.810] – Steve
What Earns Your Teacher’s Trust in a Professional Learning Session? Allison Rodman, the founder and chief learning officer of The Learning Loop, is returning to our podcast. Allison provides consulting and support for professional learning to schools, school districts, businesses, and nonprofit organizations internationally. She describes the goal of her work as helping adult learners view learning as an ongoing activity, strengthen their professional and organizational capacity, and create deliberately developmental organizations. I reached out to invite Allie back to the podcast when I read a recent post of hers where she asked this question: What earns your teacher’s trust in a professional learning session and what loses it in the first 10 minutes? Having many years of experience engaged in professional learning activities in different school settings and within different organizations, I was anxious to hear how Allie’s insights compared with mine.

[00:01:46.660] – Steve
Welcome, Allie.

[00:01:48.120] – Allie
Thank you so much, Steve. I appreciate the invitation. It’s wonderful to be back.

[00:01:52.790] – Steve
So as I was reflecting, I’ve been in this field a long time, and at the start of my career, schools were using the term, “in-service day,” and teachers complained terribly at the time of being in-serviced. Before I was in this business, I was one of those teachers being in service. Then we switched to the language of professional development, but being developed didn’t sound like the right thing either. So how do you describe what’s meant by professional learning? And is there a difference with that term in education and outside education?

[00:02:37.820] – Allie
Anytime I look at a district or organizational calendar, it’s very natural to see certain blocks colored a different way for what we’ve come over time to term these PD days, right? And I think that’s the same across industries. It’s a training day, it’s a professional development day. But what we sometimes forget is learning, particularly as a professional, isn’t limited to those blocks and boxes. And because of that, we approach them as these events rather than ongoing learning experiences. So as we make that shift from in-service to professional development to what most educators would refer to now as professional learning, it’s incredibly important that we think about that time and that space not as something being done to people, but instead in which they’re active participants and engaged collaborators in the space. And I don’t think we’re at that point just yet.

[00:03:36.250] – Steve
So I want to check a piece of what I think I’m hearing there. The learning is an ongoing thing. And the particular day of early dismissal or the day that the kids didn’t come in is an extra chunk of time to plug into that ongoing learning. So it’s either setting up something that’s going to come or it’s following up something we’re in the midst of. But from day to day, we don’t get that chunk of time. And so this special day is that chunk of time.

[00:04:09.950] – Allie
Absolutely. It’s that protected time, the one that gets its place on the calendar. But I think unfortunately, in doing that, we also sometimes forget that learning doesn’t stop. There are times when I pop into the classroom next door, I have a great conversation at the copy machine, or I just happen to catch a colleague in the hallway. Those conversations and engagements are just as meaningful, if not more meaningful, than the time that we’ve specifically slated on the calendar. When I think the real challenge arises is that as leaders and facilitators, and even sometimes the teachers ourselves, we get so focused on that day or that chunk of time that we forget all of the learning opportunities that we have to prepare for that time, to follow up after, to really think about how we keep that learning loop going. So when I work with facilitators, they’re hyper-focused on the slide deck, the resources, the materials, And then we step back and I say, well, have you even communicated to teachers or participants why you’re having this learning experience in the first place? Or is it just a PD day because that’s what your calendar tells you that it is?

[00:05:21.380] – Steve
Yeah, and it’s kind of the trouble we have with the connections of credits to PD time spent. People end up focused on collecting the credit versus the learning piece.

[00:05:41.130] – Allie
And that’s just it, right? We need X number of hours to maintain our certification, or we need X number of hours to meet state requirements or compliance requirements or school improvement requirements. My question isn’t how many seat hours, it’s the quality of learning that’s actually happening in that space, right? Because we can all go to a classroom and watch cartoons together for 3 hours, but it’s not going to produce high-quality learning for our students on Monday morning. Whereas sometimes that conversation by the copy machine might hold more value and more merit than the time that we’ve specifically blocked out on the calendar. So I think it really does call upon us as leaders and facilitators to get back to the why. Why are we making time for this? Why are we protecting time for this? And how are we best utilizing that time and that space that we have with teachers as well as the other educators across our system?

[00:06:32.900] – Steve
Well, in that statement that I pulled and caused me to reach out to you, you stated that trust in the learning activity needed to be earned, and I’m assuming not lost, when you talked about the first 10 minutes. So how do we build and support that trust?

[00:06:57.100] – Allie
One of the first things we need to do is make space for the learners in the room themselves. We will sometimes design professional learning in much the same way that we design our student learning, where it’s incredibly scripted, minute by minute by minute, that we don’t allow space for the problems to surface, the troubleshooting conversations to take place. And if we’re going to use that professional learning time as nothing more than a strategy dump, it’s not going to make its way into practice come the next day, week, or month, because we’ve gotta allow room for the people in the space to be able to have the tough conversations, to be able to openly share, hey, this may not work in my classroom and here’s why, or I have doubts about this leadership practice and this working in my building and here’s why. But unless there is time specifically allocated for those conversations amid the resources, the tools, the planning, we’re not really making space for that learning to grow. And when I talk about trust, it’s, yes, about that space, but it’s also about creating an environment where people can feel vulnerable and they can share, I don’t think this is gonna work, or, I did that and it blew up.

[00:08:15.150] – Allie
Can you help me figure out why? So instead, we come into classrooms often in chairs that are way too small for our adult bodies.

[00:08:24.740] – Steve
[laughter] Or the cafeteria table. That’s the one that’s worse to me.

[00:08:29.520] – Allie
The dreaded cafeteria table.

[00:08:30.950] – Steve
No back support. [laughter]

[00:08:31.830] – Allie
[laughter] Yeah, no back support, hard as can be, tables stuck together where you literally feel like you’re stuck, right? Mentally as well as physically. And we just give people stuff. And I’m not saying that this stuff is bad, right? I never want to leave a professional learning session and say, well, that was great and I had some really good conversation, but I don’t have the tools I need to be successful in my classroom or my building. So I don’t want to default completely to the other end of things where we don’t appropriately prepare for our professional learning sessions, or we don’t come equipped with the resources necessary for educators to be effective in their practice. But I also don’t want to go through every single minute and every single tool without allowing time and space for the real conversations to happen, because if Teacher A isn’t talking to Teacher B about what it looks like for their cohort or their section of students, you could design the most amazing professional learning in the world, and it’s never going to find its way into a classroom the next day.

[00:09:35.500] – Steve
So I’m thinking that successful professional learning, and I define that as eventually, I can show a positive impact on students. To me, that’s when I really know that the professional learning was effective. But to make that happen in a school system, it requires a commitment from lots of people in different roles. So I’d kind of like to throw those roles out to you one at a time. And if you would, what kind of commitment do people at that spot need to make? So let’s start with district-level staff. What commitment would you say district-level staff has to have in order for professional learning opportunities to be valuable?

[00:10:26.250] – Allie
District-level staff have an obligation and a professional responsibility to be incredibly clear on your goals and what your students need, because that needs to be the driver for everything. So you can bring in the most dynamic speaker within your field who gets people completely riled up and excited and energized, but if their message isn’t directly tied to where we need to be moving educators and ultimately students, you’re not meeting your professional responsibility. And there’s a need not only to identify what that is, but also to clearly communicate it. So is your strategic plan just a PDF that lives on the website? Do you go over student data once or twice a year because you’re obligated to do so, or do those metrics truly drive all of the decisions that you’re making? Not just in terms of the curricular programs that you’re purchasing, but the individuals who you might be bringing in to facilitate professional learning, the degree to which you are training the adults within your system to facilitate that professional learning in order to build more internal sustainability.

[00:11:44.270] – Allie
There’s just as much an obligation to be making those leadership moves as there is to go to the board meeting and report out on progress towards the strategic plan, right? It can’t just be – I think about sometimes, years ago, we would go through those curriculum development or redevelopment processes, and we would have these beautiful curriculum documents that would live in binders somewhere in the district or somewhere in our school, but it didn’t always find its way to day-to-day classroom practice. And I think there’s a parallel here with professional learning where we can design the most robust, intentional, and thoughtful strategic plans, district goals, mission, and vision, but if that’s not the through line that’s driving the professional learning work with our educators that we hope ultimately then makes that impact that you described, Steve, in the classroom, then we’ve missed the mark at the district level.

[00:12:41.860] – Steve
How about building-level administrators and instructional coaches?

[00:12:47.710] – Allie
When we think about that building-level leadership, yes, they need to be aware of the goals and they need to share some of that responsibility for carrying those goals out day to day. But they’ve also got to think about what their communication with teachers and other staff members looks like around those goals. So when you’re sending out that weekly update over email, are you just saying, today or tomorrow is our PD day for this quarter? Or are you clearly communicating what the goals and the learning objectives are for that day? Are you perhaps prepping or priming educators before they come into that day or that series of sessions to reflect on their own practice, to think about what are some of the gaps that they might be able to not only surface with colleagues, but hopefully fill through collaboration on that day so that teachers don’t just wake up in the morning and say, yep, I got a PD day today, right? But instead, they have a really clear direction on the purpose for the day and how they might develop their own skills as well as the skills of their colleagues to make that time as valuable as possible.

[00:13:56.660] – Steve
And okay to add that they should be there.

[00:14:00.600] – Allie
Yes, right. And I want to flesh out that word be, right?

[00:14:06.200] – Steve
Yes, thank you. Not standing in the doorway.

[00:14:10.440] – Allie
So like step 1 is yes, you came to the session, right? Like you are there, you are physically present. Are you psychologically present?

[00:14:20.020] – Steve
Right.

[00:14:20.380] – Allie
Or are you just kind of grading papers or doing things in the background, right? Because I think this is where we make that shift in the system of the responsibility from districts to building leaders to then teacher leaders and the teachers that are engaging in the professional learning is that it’s not just a matter of showing up, it’s about how you’re bringing your full self to the work and actively engaging in that meaningful conversation with your colleagues. But to be fair, it’s really hard for teachers and other staff members to do that if the through lines have not been clearly communicated, right? What are the goals? Why am I doing this? Kids ask us in the classroom all the time, “When am I ever going to use this? Why are we doing this?” And that communication is important not just for our students, but for the adults in our system as well.

[00:15:10.180] – Steve
It was a lot of years ago, but the picture is still seared in my head. I had teachers, I think, from 3 schools in a district together and the session was just going extremely, extremely well in that people were actively engaged. And I got to this one spot and I wanted to make a point and I said, now this carries over to administrators as well. And I said, where are the administrators?

[00:15:34.350] – Allie
Mm-hmm.

[00:15:35.840] – Steve
And not a hand went up in the room. People’s heads turned around to look and I thought I may as well have pulled a pistol and shot myself in the head because the air just like, sucked out of the room. And I just told everybody how important this is.

[00:15:53.730] – Allie
Exactly.

[00:15:54.620] – Steve
Everybody in the room just got a message of the importance of what it was that we were doing.

[00:16:00.230] – Allie
Or equally embarrassing is when you have administrators come to the session, and I’m saying this as a former leader myself, right? So I’m owning this, but you come to the session and then you just kind of sit in the back as an observer as opposed to commingling, being an active and engaged participant, and really thinking about what does this mean for the people doing the work with students every single day. So one of the things that I’ve started doing when planning professional learning sessions, as well as supporting facilitators who guide them, is running parallel tracks for what are some of the things that teachers can be thinking about with this prompt or this activity, but then what is the parallel responsibility of leaders that they should be thinking about in terms of their own action planning, instructional leadership, coaching, etc.?

[00:16:51.160] – Steve
So I’m working with a school right now that is going to be putting some teacher leaders out there leading the facilitation of professional learning for the first time. What would you say are some of the critical things for those folks to keep in mind?

[00:17:09.650] – Allie
I’m gonna take one step backward for a second, Steve, and talk about the professional learning for those folks.

[00:17:16.350] – Steve
Good.

[00:17:16.510] – Allie
Because I think, we see these individuals and they are absolute rock stars in the classroom with students, but we never take the time to make that correlation between andragogy and pedagogy to show them that adult learning can be different than student learning. So we just kind of put them in a room full of adults and hope that all goes well, saying, okay, you’re great facilitating for students, I’m sure you can handle a room full of adults. And that is absolutely not the case.

[00:17:47.000] – Steve
Sure.

[00:17:47.320] – Allie
So a lot of the work that I do with teacher leaders specifically, is building not only their facilitation skills, but their communication skills, mediation, problem solving. So I think that’s part of the first step is making sure that we are equipping them so that they can ultimately facilitate the content, the strategies, the conversation in a way that’s effective. But we can’t miss that piece of the puzzle. We spend so much time on teacher preparation and leader preparation and then just assume that those folks can lead professional learning experiences, and that’s not always the case.

[00:18:25.080] – Steve
That’s a great place for coaching to fit in. being able to provide those folks coaching pre and post to them taking on those activities.

[00:18:35.590] – Allie
Absolutely. Thinking about how are we helping them to see what was a really good facilitation move versus, we might have been able to draw some of the participants in that workshop or that PLC in a little bit more if we had made this one shift in our practice.

[00:18:51.470] – Steve
And speak a little bit – what’s the message that should be going out to teachers as they as they walk into a day for that learning to happen?

[00:19:03.430] – Allie
One of the things that you mentioned earlier in the conversation, Steve, is this idea of trust. And I think that too often trust is missing from those professional learning engagements for a variety of different reasons. It’s always been a compliance exercise, or I’ve got to get those seat hours. But I would encourage teachers to really think about how they’re entering those spaces and those opportunities as real opportunities to learn. But that means that you’re going to have to have some trust in the facilitator and you’re going to need to have some trust in yourself and your colleagues. And when we talk about trust from a research-based standpoint, it’s really the juxtaposition of 2 different factors that I often walk through with leaders and with facilitators. One is this idea of vulnerability, whether that’s individual vulnerability or shared vulnerability among the group. That I can come into that space and not have to put on the face that everything is perfect when it may in reality very well be a dumpster fire, but instead can walk in and say, you know what, this was a really hard week, or I’m really struggling with this section of students.

[00:20:12.730] – Allie
And that applies whether it is your first year of teaching or your 20th year of teaching. We’re all allowed in the profession, and I think we forget this sometimes, to struggle and to admit our challenges. But none of us are going to grow unless we can be vulnerable enough in those professional learning spaces to have the real authentic honest conversations with each other. And the second part of that is, it’s interesting because it’s kind of ironic, but the second part of building trust is strength. Being able to show each other, you know, hey wait, I did this, so I think I can do that. Or, you know, I made this move, maybe I trust this facilitator to be able to make this next one. Because when we talk about self-efficacy and ultimately collective efficacy, it’s built from those mastery experiences of being able to say, okay, I moved from point A to point B, or I tried that strategy and my classroom didn’t completely implode. I’m going to trust the facilitator that I can move now from point B to point C. And we develop that sense of strength and self-efficacy not only from seeing ourselves do that, but also from seeing colleagues do that.

[00:21:24.120] – Allie
So when teachers come into those professional learning experiences, I think we have a responsibility not just to ourselves and our own growth, but to one another to be able to share that progress and highlight that progress, not just keep it kind of hidden behind the four walls of our classroom. And sometimes, unfortunately, that’s what happens.

[00:21:45.660] – Steve
So the bingo word for me when you got to it was vulnerability, because I was sitting here with the word on the tip of my tongue and you punched it out there. If I look at it in a classroom, a teacher has to create a classroom environment where kids are comfortable enough to become vulnerable for learning to happen. And so you’re really establishing that that’s the professional culture we need to create in the school for the staff to show up feeling comfortable enough to be vulnerable. Because without that vulnerability, the learning is not going to happen.

[00:22:34.350] – Allie
And I think it’s really hard for our profession specifically because of the nature of what we do. So we’re not on a production line creating widgets and hitting particular sales targets. We’re essentially waking up every single morning, coming to our places of work, and helping to grow humans, right? So there’s a lot of complexity, and that’s why we talk about teaching and leading not just being a science, because there are very scientifically driven ways to learn, but also in art, we need to think on our feet. We need to be responsive to what’s happening in the room. And because of that, whether you’re sitting in the teacher role or the teacher role or the teacher role or the leader role, there is this incredible amount of pressure to keep it all together, to make it look like all of the plates are spinning, the balls are in the air, and In that, I think we develop the mindset and unfortunately the automatic response that we’re not vulnerable, we don’t have any challenges, we’re the expert in the classroom or the expert in the building because people are counting on us. But we need to create professional learning spaces where those guards can come down, where we can have the real conversations and just say, yeah, this lesson was really darn hard.

[00:23:58.010] – Allie
I’m struggling. How did your students respond to it? What does your student work look like? What adjustments do we need to make in our grade level, our content area team, or across the building so that we can all develop our effectiveness in this particular area? But that idea of vulnerability and admitting we don’t have all the pieces, we don’t have everything together, is so hard for us.

[00:24:24.960] – Steve
Sounds like you’re describing professional learning communities.

[00:24:30.750] – Allie
Professional learning communities. And it’s hard because I think that term means so many different things.

[00:24:36.230] – Steve
A real professional learning community is what you were describing.

[00:24:38.530] – Allie
Correct, right? Because I think we’ve slapped that term PLC on pretty much everything, just to be like, okay, it’s a collaborative space. But when we think about that real definition of a professional learning community, where there’s the vulnerability, the collaboration, the Data-driven conversations. Yes, we, we need to show up and be fully engaged and, and have the tough conversations, not just come into a room on a Tuesday afternoon, leave with a packet and a couple of strategies we can use with our students, but really understand what’s the intention behind that strategy. Where have other teachers struggled that I can learn from and grow from? And that’s the part that too often is missing in our professional learning sessions and that ultimately erodes trust.

[00:25:27.800] – Steve
That’s why my work with professional learning communities, my key question is, what do the kids need us to learn?

[00:25:36.060] – Allie
Yes.

[00:25:36.220] – Steve
So when that group of teachers sits down and you’re looking at data or you’re looking at the student work or you’re looking at your standards, that’s the question you’re asking yourself. The student needs are what’s going to drive my learning. Talk a little bit about how instructional coaching and peer coaching fit into professional learning.

[00:25:59.530] – Allie
You mentioned earlier the idea of district and building leaders being in those professional learning sessions, and I think it’s equally important in the cases where instructional coaches may not be facilitating those professional learning sessions that they’re in them as well, that they hear firsthand what are the strategies that are being recommended to teachers or that teachers are being given an opportunity to explore, what are some of the challenges that they’re surfacing in the course of those sessions, because then you want that through line to carry into the coaching that you do. I think this is sometimes why we feel as though education and our education of teachers specifically feels like the flavor of the week. I remember as an administrator or as a teacher, anytime my leaders would go to a conference, I would just get incredibly nervous and be like, okay, what are they bringing back this time? Right? Like, you knew it was inevitable. It was going to be a program or a tool or a strategy. You just kind of waited. And then those of us who had been around long enough sort of waited a little longer to see what was actually going to stick 3 months later.

[00:27:08.960] – Allie
So as a coach, we want to be that connective tissue that helps the through lines stick, so that it’s not just this one workshop that I went to, or this one PLC that I happen to be a part of, but instead it’s truly an integrated ongoing conversation about my practice. So that when that coach comes into my classroom and sees me struggling in a particular area, or sees an opportunity for refinement in another, they’re able to point back directly to that professional learning experience and say, “Hey, do you remember when we sat shoulder to shoulder and looked at this strategy, or we watched that video together? I think there’s a perfect fit for that in your practice or in your work with this particular section of students.” As opposed to our learning with adults feeling like this PD day here, this PLC over here, your curriculum meeting, your grade-level meeting, your instructional coach, we truly have a responsibility at all levels of the system to make sure those pieces are interconnected and that that interconnectedness is actively communicated to the people doing the work.

[00:28:20.180] – Steve
So, yeah, this may be a curveball question. I don’t know, just toss it out there. What are you processing as your thoughts of how AI might be impacting the field, I guess, of professional learning?

[00:28:39.320] – Allie
It’s the word of the week, right? I think about when we would sit down with Sesame Street as little kids, and it was like, today’s letter of the week is… Well, today’s letters of the week in education right now are certainly AI. It comes up in every conversation I’m having with leaders and teachers. And yes, it certainly comes up in these conversations about professional learning. much like the concerns that we have about AI in our student spaces, I think there are similar concerns that we need to be aware of about AI in our adult learning spaces. And I say this as someone who very much uses aspects of AI when appropriate in their professional work, but does so cautiously and intentionally. And I think that’s because I’ve seen the product of what can happen if you’re not asking the right questions, if you’re not being a thoughtful consumer, or if you’re not really strong on the design end of things. So we think about a teacher that just kind of plugs in, “Give me a small group instruction activity for X, Y, and Z.” Well, that’s great, but does the agent know who your students are, what their instructional levels are, what they specifically need, what the data is showing.

[00:30:01.990] – Allie
All of those are very important variables that seasoned teaching professionals know and integrate into strong instructional planning. The opposite side of the same coin is what we’re doing for adult learning. And you can’t just go into an AI agent and say, I’m leading a workshop on formative assessment that’s 60 minutes long, and I want to integrate this particular strategy. Because what you’re going to get back is a bunch of junk, quite honestly, no different than a teacher who’s doing that level of planning or prompting at the classroom level. So some of my work recently has been working with facilitators and professional learning designers specifically to use those AI agents more intentionally and responsibly by first, identifying what are the right inputs. Are we even describing this group of learners? Do you even know, right, this group of learners that’s coming into the space? And then how are we judiciously kind of weeding through the responses that we get back to make sure that we’re personalizing and tailoring for the learners that are actually showing up in the room? Because that’s how trust is built. You’re hearing the voices, you’re seeing the reactions, you’re incorporating the human element of the work to make sure that that takes up as much space as the design element, whether that’s AI-designed or human-designed.

[00:31:33.650] – Steve
Yeah, I would say myself, when I find that I’ve done something effective with AI, it’s caused me to put more time into thinking about what I was doing than had I not. So whatever time it may have saved me in that it designed the chart I was looking for, it raised 3 other questions, or caused me to raise 3 other questions and look at, look at another direction. But a lot for us to figure out.

[00:32:10.490] – Allie
Yeah, it can be a really strong thought partner because I’ll give it – and I have been doing this work for years. So we give it all of this information, we’re pre-thinking through our intent, the way that we want to reach a particular group of teachers and leaders, and we’re sharing all of that. But as you described, it then comes back with 3, 6, 7, other questions where I’m like, wow, that’s some really good perspective-taking that I haven’t had an opportunity to take, and I do need to make a value judgment here about Is this the best use of time? Is this the right facilitation move? Is it the most appropriate strategy or tool? So when given the proper inputs and the right level of intention and thought, I think that’s where I see AI being a valuable tool in this professional learning space, is that thought partner to kind of push us outside of the box to think a little bit differently than perhaps we have, because ultimately, teaching and leading are very isolating professions. We stick a teacher in a room with 30 kids and they close the door, right?

[00:33:14.480] – Allie
We put a teacher, we put a leader in a building and they’re responsible for all of the people within that space. And we don’t get enough time for that thought partnership. So while at the end of the day, I would love for that thought partnership to be that human connection as much as possible, I also think there is some value in having that other tool to bounce ideas off of, to think things through perhaps a little bit more critically than we might do independantly or in our office.

[00:33:45.330] – Allie
I knew that I could count on you to come on and trigger my thinking, and I’m sure the thinking of the listeners on here. Any closing thoughts you’d like to share here as we wrap up?

[00:34:03.940] – Allie
First of all, thank you so much for the invitation, Steve. I always love having these conversations together, and you certainly push my thinking in in new ways, so I’m truly appreciative of that. I would say the final thought is to not focus on that one block of PD or the multiple blocks of PD that are on the calendar and only design for that. We have to think about what does that ongoing learning loop look like for educators across the system. So whether you’re leveraging internal expertise to facilitate those sessions or you’re bringing in an outside speaker, or you’re working with someone else in a different district or even another field, we’ve got to move beyond the idea that the PD day is just the PD day. The trust is built when that PD day is appropriately planned for, designed, facilitated, includes the voices and perspectives of the people in the room, and then ultimately doesn’t drop off when the day is over. But instead, coaches continue to come back to the content from that day. Leaders continue to frame their work within the strategies, the tenets, the approaches of that day. That’s when we see the true adult learning continue beyond just the days that we have it slated for on the calendar.

[00:35:26.730] – Steve
Well, Allie, what’s the best way for listeners to follow up with you, keep track of the work that you’re doing, maybe drop you some questions that they have?

[00:35:37.160] – Allie
They are more than welcome to reach out to me on social media at The Learning Loop, as well as on my website, www.thelearningloop.com. I do send out a weekly newsletter with free resources, tools, and some of the thought questions, much like you and I explored today, Steve. So I would love to connect with folks in any of those spaces.

[00:36:00.410] – Steve
The newsletter that caused me to reach out and connect back with you. So, I encourage listeners to look that up. Thanks so much.

[00:36:11.590] – Allie
Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it.

[00:36:15.170] – 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.

Podcast for Teachers: My Professional Learning – How Do I Make the Most Of What I’ve Learned During Virtual and Hybrid Teaching

Professional Learning should be personalized. Allie Rodman, author and founder of The Learning Loop, identifies ways that teachers can maximize the value of their ongoing learning in the post pandemic setting. How do you tap into, direct, and personalize your learning opportunities?

Visit Allie’s website, The Learning Loop, here.

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

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTSteve [Intro]: 00:00 Hello, and welcome to the teacher edition of the Steve Barkley ponders out loud podcast. The complexity of teaching is both challenging and rewarding. And my curiosity is peaked. Whenever I explore with teachers, the multiple pathways for facilitating student engagement in the exciting world of learning this podcast looks to serve teachers as they motivate coach and support their learners,

Steve: 00:30 My professional learning: How do I make the most of what I’ve learned during virtual and hybrid teaching? On today’s podcast, we are joined by Allie Rodman. She’s the author of, “Personalized Professional Learning: A Job-Embedded Pathway for Elevating Teacher Voice,” and she’s also the founder of The Learning Loop, an organization that designs facilitates and coaches professional learning. Welcome Allie.

Allie: 01:00 Thank you, Steve. I appreciate you having me on the show.

Steve: 01:03 I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about your background and what led you into focusing on educator professional learning?

Allie: 01:13 Certainly. So I have experience as a high school teacher and instructional coach and a school leader. And one of the things that continued to bother me in the professional development space is that as much as we were nudging and pushing teachers to design differentiated and personalized instruction for students, we were still offering a one size-fits-all, sit and get PD for them. And I knew that we could and we had to do better as a profession. So I have been spending my work really focused on the coaching of leaders as well as facilitators to ensure that that process is more personalized than what it is presently.

Steve: 01:54 So on your website, Allie, you talked about the importance of learner voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery as it applies to professional learning and I’m wondering if you could kind of take those each one at a time and if I’m a teacher, how do I reach out and look to build those things into my own learning as an educator?

Allie: 02:26 Certainly. So these concepts come from Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda’s work focused on personalized learning for students. And I wanted us as educators to think about how we might apply those through an andragogical or an adult learning lens to support our work as facilitators, but also as learners ourselves, to ensure that those experiences we’re engaging in, feel more personalized and are meeting us exactly where we need to be with the content that we need. So when we talk about learner voice, I want to that teachers feel empowered not only to have a say in the topics of professional learning that they are selecting, but also the types of activities that are a part of those sessions and the ways in which they are engaging both during and after the session itself. And that’s what really led to this piece around co-creation. Learners should be there side by side with the facilitator, establishing what the learning goals for the professional session are, as well as what the success metrics are going to be.

Allie: 03:33 If I’m doing this practice, if I’m engaging in this work effectively in my classroom, what should it look like? What should it sound like? What should it feel like? So I want to make sure that the teachers feel as though they have that voice, not only in that part of the process in selecting the topics, but also in the co-creation process as well. Then as a teacher, once you get into that professional learning session itself, whether it’s synchronous in a classroom or asynchronous in a Zoom room, you want to ensure that you have time and space to get messy with the other learners in the room to socially construct around the concepts and the content together so that you’re not only thinking about and planning around what it’s going to look like in your classroom, but you’re also pushing one another to troubleshoot there in the moment so that you’re able to kind of poke holes and find solutions together while you’re in that space with your peers. And then finally, I want to ensure that our professional learning leads to self discovery. So that as a learner, you’re not just kind of tying a bow on that individual session, but that it’s leading you to new questions and a desire to continue exploring and pushing your practice forward.

Steve: 04:48 Allie, I know that you had in your background experience, you spent some time as an instructional coach. And as I was listening to you, I was thinking about what an instructional coach does to support those things. But now I’m also wondering if I’m a teacher and there’s an instructional coach in my building – instructional coaches available to me, or if not, and I’m looking at my colleagues as peer coaches, how best would a person reach out to available coaches to build and support the kind of learning that you’ve that you’ve just described?

Allie: 05:28 Yeah. So Steve, as a coach, one of the things I always used to share with my teachers was invite me into your most challenging section. Take me behind the curtain, show me the messy stuff, because that’s where we have the opportunity to grow the furthest and the fastest together. If I’m able to be, you know, have the opportunity to see those messy points, that’s where the learning is going to get real and we can develop a truly authentic relationship that that pushes practice forward. So as a teacher, you know, communicating with their coach, that would be my first piece of advice is to, invite them into, you know, all the messy stuff, let them see that. And then second, it would be to have a willingness to take risks and to try new things. So even if it’s outside your comfort zone, don’t shut down a suggestion or a practice simply because it doesn’t feel exactly aligned to your typical teaching style or practice, but instead see it as an opportunity to stretch yourself and to grow.

Steve: 06:32 A word that hit me as I was listening to you go through the learner voice, co-creation, constructions and self-discovery is reflection seems to be a critical element. Thoughts or comments on building increased reflection into this process?

Allie: 06:57 Certainly. So I think that’s one thing that the pandemic left us with, right? That I hope doesn’t go away, is more space for reflection in that we weren’t caught up in the busy-ness of classroom changes and, you know, hallway transitions, but instead we’re able to kind of step away at certain points and think about what was working, where did we need to improve? What practices should fall away and where should we perhaps dig in more deeply? So my hope is that we take that with us as we transition back to physical spaces and that that becomes a part of our new normal, is that increased time and space for reflection.

Steve: 07:37 So maybe as a teacher, I actually have to look how to create that for myself, if I’m in a system that isn’t creating it.

Allie: 07:47 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I had my moments as a teacher where I would during my planning period, go into my room, close the door, turn off the lights and sit on the opposite side of the room so that no one knew that I was there, right? I think in some ways, we need to empower ourselves to make those choices even if they feel a little misaligned at times with what’s happening in the busy-ness of what’s around us, being busy doesn’t always equate to being productive or being effective and we need to give ourselves permission to create that reflection space for ourselves even if others aren’t crafting it for us.

Steve: 08:25 Allie, what do you think teachers may have discovered about their own learning during the quarantine that while they were teaching virtually in hybrid, that they might want to carry forward with them even if it means the doors are opened up and we’ve got the students back in front of us?

Allie: 08:46 So I think we all discovered that we’re stronger risk-takers than we ever imagined we could be, right? You know, come the shutdown, we were all first year teachers, first year coaches, first year administrators. There was a lot we needed to figure out, but in that sink or swim type of environment, I also feel as though at all levels of the system, we found a bit more resilience than perhaps we realized we had. So for teachers, I would just encourage you, keep exploring, keep trying new things and taking those risks and failing not only forward, but through because it has truly empowered, not only our adult learners in the system about where they can stretch their capacity, but you’re modeling that learning for our students and that is something that we just cannot put a value on.

Steve: 09:38 Exactly. The number of teachers who were reaching out and asking their students, in effect, for coaching feedback. You know, “I tried something I’ve never done before in our Zoom room today, so how did it go?” To build that into our our constant ongoing growth process would be a powerful piece to take away.

Allie: 09:59 Yeah, absolutely.

Steve: 10:01 Well, Allie, I’m wondering, are there some resources that teachers might tap into through your website if you tell them a little bit about that and how they can connect with you?

Allie: 10:12 Certainly. So the one thing I want to encourage teachers to do is first and foremost, maintain a reflection space for yourself. And I think sometimes we default to that always being a journal. And I’ll tell you, I am not a journaler. I have tried so many different versions of it, and I just can’t find one that works for me. I like voice recording, right? Others like vision boards or having kind of a sketch pad, but I want to make sure that teachers as model learners have that reflection space for themselves in whatever form it might take. And then on my website, I have some guiding questions to help teachers think about their own points of recovery. So how are they ensuring that professionally, as well as physically, they’re giving themselves the opportunity to not only recharge, but actually recover? And the nice thing about those questions is that they’re framed in such a way that teachers can take them to a coach or take them to a leader as an entry point to facilitate that conversation at a broader level than just the classroom level.

Steve: 11:13 Oh, that’s great. And how do they find your website?

Allie: 11:16 So my website is www.the learningloop.com and you can also connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at the learning loop.

Steve: 11:27 And we’ll we’ll put all of that into the into the lead-in to this podcast. Thank you so much for for sharing your thinking as you were describing the reflection piece there. When I started blogging, people told me I would learn from doing it and I didn’t believe it, but I did. And the same thing has come over to the podcast. So yeah, creating as many ways for educators to stay involved in that possible. So I’ll look forward to another chance for us to connect.

Allie: 11:56 Thank you so much, Steve. I appreciate you having me on.

Steve: 12:00 You bet. Take care.

Steve [Outro]: 12:03 Thanks for listening in folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on twitter @stevebarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

Podcast: Professional Learning—Let’s Not Go Back to Normal!

steve barkley ponders out loud, Professional Learning—Let’s Not Go Back to Normal!

Allie Rodman, the author of Personalized Professional Learning: A Job- Embedded Pathway for Elevating Teacher Voice and founder of The Learning Loop, shares ways that school leaders and instructional coaches should be building learner voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery into their designs for professional learning. What are we learning as leaders in the time of virtual and hybrid days that should we carry forward?

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

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Announcer: 00:00 Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud is brought to you by Academy for Educators. Online, professional development for teachers and leaders. Online courses, modules, and micro-credential programs for teachers to enhance their skillsets. Now featuring the instructional coaching micro-credential including five online modules framed around the work of Steve Barkley. Learn, grow, inspire. Academyforeducators.Org.

Steve[Intro]: 00:25 Hello and welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. For over three decades, I’ve had the opportunity to learn with educators at all levels, both nationally and internationally. I invite you to listen as I explore my thoughts and learning on a variety of topics connected to teaching, learning, and leading with some of the best and brightest educators from around the globe. Thanks for listening in.

Steve: 00:53 Professional learning—let’s not go back to the old normal. I’m excited today to have Allie Rodman, the author of personalized professional learning, a job-embedded pathway for elevating teacher voice, join us on the podcast. Allie is also the founder of The Learning Loop, an organization that designs, facilitates, and coaches professional learning. Welcome, Allie.

Allie: 01:20 Thanks so much for having me, Steve. It’s a pleasure to be here today.

Steve: 01:24 I’m wondering if you would just start telling us a little bit about your background and what led you to form the Learning Loop?

Allie: 01:32 Certainly. So I was a high school teacher and both Richmond, Virginia as well as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I worked as an instructional coach and a school leader and through each of those roles, one of the things that continued to bother me was how despite the fact that we were asking teachers to differentiate personalized learning for their students, we were continuing to facilitate one-size-fits-all sit and get professional development for them and I knew that not only could we do better, but we had to do better on behalf of those teachers.

Steve: 02:08 Well, on your website, you describe the importance of professional learning including learner, voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery and I’m wondering if you could kind of walk us through those considering what role should administrators and instructional coaches play in making those happen for teachers?

Allie: 02:38 Certainly. So those four key elements of personalized learning come from Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda’s work as they coach teachers around what it looks like to personalize instruction for students. And as mentors of mine, I really turned to them to think about how could we reimagine those same key concepts of personalized learning, but in the andragogical or the adult learning space. So in my work with both leaders as well as coaches, in thinking about those professional learning spaces, we use the elements of voice, and co-creation initially to bring teachers into the process, not only to select the topics of professional learning that are interesting to them, but also to truly be co-creators in the process of design. And then from there, we want to ensure that the professional learning sessions themselves, whether those are happening synchronously or asynchronously. Provide opportunities for teachers to socially construct to get messy with the content, not just go through a series of strategies and deliverables. So that ultimately, when they leave that session and go to implement the work in practice, it leads them toward a self-discovery where they continue to extend that learning loop both as a group, as well as individually in their practice.

Steve: 04:01 One of the phrases that I frequently use in my work with professional learning communities and then tie it back to teachers developing their professional growth plans is the question, what do my students need me to learn? I’m wondering how you see that student needs or student goals entering into the work of professional learning.

Allie: 04:31 Yes. So Steve, typically when I’m working with a district or school leader or a professional learning facilitator, I encourage them to use multiple data sets to guide their planning processes. And one of those sets is a teacher needs assessment. So that’s the sort of teacher want part of the equation, right? That choice and that voice, in the process. Another part as you noted, is our student achievement and growth data. So from what we’re seeing related to student progress, what are our students mirroring back to us that they need from us as learning facilitators for them? And then third, I also look at with those leaders and coaches, the observation and evaluation data that they’ve collected both formally and informally over the course of the year because I want to ensure that when we identify what the student needs are, we’re also matching them up with the teacher needs. Where are the gaps in practice that we need to address to ensure that teachers have the capacity, the skills and the mindsets necessary to meet that student need as effectively as possible.

Steve: 05:36 Allie, how has the pandemic impacted your work that you’re doing?

Allie: 05:44 Well, I’m spending a lot more time in Zoom rooms, I have to be honest there. Less time working directly in schools and in conference spaces. In some ways, I like to refer to this time as sort of the pause and the pivot, right? And I think we’ve overused that word pivot possibly, as much as we possibly can, but we were moving to this space and professional learning where things were becoming more personalized, not only for teacher professional learning but also for coach and leader professional learning. And in some ways, we kind of halted, right? We paused and went back to, as we did in student instruction, to some of our old practices where it was much of the same, one-size-fits-all, you know, work. However, where we were able to pivot, and I hope that we’re able to keep some of this is that we started rethinking how we use time and space in professional learning. So whether that was making some shifts in our learning and our coaching platforms or becoming comfortable with new modes of communication, I feel as though the pandemic gave us an opportunity to reimagine how we use, not only the content part of professional learning but the time and space elements as well.

Steve: 06:59 I’m wondering how we look at what we learned that we need to hold on to as we move ahead. And I found that I was forced to actually more personalize my work over Zoom and I’ve expanded that. I just put a project together this week where I’m consulting with a school that’s looking to redesign their professional growth plan with teachers and there are seven administrators. And so the project is going to start with me having a one-on-one conversation with each of the seven administrators so that when we go into the first meeting that I’m facilitating, I’ll go into it with all that background. That’s something I never would have done when I was jumping on airplanes and flying off, but I think I need to keep that when I start getting on the plane and flying off. And I can still Zoom it, you know, on the front end. But what are you thinking we need to do to kind of stop and see that we don’t go back to that old normal and really take advantage of the things that we’ve learned?

Allie: 08:31 Well, one of the points is certainly those connection elements that you referenced, Steve, right? In some ways, you and I are coaching in schools that we’ve never stepped physical foot into, right? And that’s a completely – when you want to talk new normal for us, we’re used to walking the halls, shoulder to shoulder with a leader, getting a sense of the space and the culture, and then stepping into a professional learning space with teachers and leaders. So that part certainly feels different but I think as a facilitator, much like you, it’s pushed me out of my comfort zone to re-imagine new ways to make those connections and better understand the culture and the feeling of particular learning organizations. Along with that, there are two other elements that stand out to me that I want to make sure we don’t lose.

Allie: 09:17 One is space for reflection, in some ways, being away from the hustle and bustle of, you know, moving from class to class, meeting, to meeting room to room, it’s given us an opportunity at all levels of the system in some ways to pause and to be able to reflect on the procedures and the practices that have had the greatest impact on our work and those that we might be able to let fall away in order to make space for the most critical elements. And second, is that in some ways, much like you described kind of that personalization and those one-on-one touchpoints, this time has given us permission to exclude individuals from particular sessions in a meaningful way. In Priya Parker’s work, “The Art of Gathering,” she references this principle of excluding well in order to ensure that our gatherings together are as meaningful and as authentic as possible. And I think sometimes in education, we bring everyone to the table without the thought and intention about whether it’s the right people in the right space at the right time. And by putting people into different teams and rooms and breakout sessions, we’ve had to get much more careful and intentional about those moves and I hope that that piece continues to serve us well, whether we’re in virtual spaces or physical ones.

Steve: 10:52 That’s powerful. I’m just thinking back to the very beginning of my career as a – I was still full-time classroom teaching and doing some PD services, and I would plan out what I was going to do with the central office person who was hiring me and then I’d show up and there’d be people in the audience – that was making absolutely no sense at all.

Allie: 11:25 It’s clock hours, right? We feel like everyone has to be there and it’s not respectful, it’s not thoughtful and it’s certainly not what we would do with our students so we shouldn’t be doing it with our adult learners either.

Steve: 11:38 I have not thought of this in years till I was just listening to laying out, but I was actually asked to do an at 90 minutes session on bringing hands-on into the primary science classroom and I was having people go around and introduce themselves and this person said, “I’m a high school English teacher.” I stood there with my mouth open and I didn’t know what to say. I was like, embarrassed that – it certainly wasn’t my responsibility that they were there, but…

Allie: 12:14 In the same breath, we’re coaching teachers to put students into very intentional, small groups that are based on learning objectives. I mean, we can do the same for adults also.

Steve: 12:25 As we move along here to close it out, I’m wondering if you’ve got one top suggestion that you’d like to offer to those who would be planning professional learning pieces that might be available to teachers this spring yet?

Allie: 12:44 Certainly. So it would include the learners, not just in the selection of the topics. So often when I work with leaders, they’ll say, “well, I’m incorporating learner’s voice. I gave them a menu of topics to choose from and then they picked.” That’s a good first move, and I don’t want to lose that, but I also want to ensure that those teachers are co-creators in the process as I referenced earlier, so that we are bringing them in early when we are planning the design to make sure that the series of learning activities that we are outlining, that the types of resources that we’re bringing in and the ways in which we’re conceiving that learning continue beyond the synchronous engagement, considers their individual needs and learning preferences as well along the way.

Steve: 13:32 You just tapped me, I’m going to have to pass on a compliment. I had a first phone call with an administrator last night who was looking for some information about some PD. And to my surprise, when the Zoom room had opened, there were five teachers there that he had invited to talk to me before we got into any other discussion. So I will be dropping him a note to share your words there. And it was powerful. I must say it stepped me it stepped me back.

Allie: 14:18 Who better to inform the learning than the learners themselves? They should be a part of that design process.

Steve: 14:23 If I’ve ever if I’ve ever experienced that before, it’s probably because I sought it out. So I was surprised that they had
stepped forward and built it into the design.

Allie: 14:35 It’s exciting to see.

Steve: 14:37 Allie, I’m wondering if you would share with folks a little bit about your book and some information about your website and how
people can connect with you.

Allie: 14:46 Certainly. So my book is personalized, professional learning, a job-embedded pathway for elevating teacher voice. It’s available from ASCD as well as on Amazon. And it really serves as a guidebook for both leaders and facilitators to walk them through the steps that they might take to design, as well as continue, a more personalized model of professional learning at all levels of the system. And individuals can connect with me on Twitter or Facebook and Instagram @thelearningloop, as well as a check out my website, www.thelearningloop.com. This spring, I’m going to be offering a virtual course specifically for facilitators. So we’ll walk through step-by-step, what does it mean to craft professional learning engagements that don’t just feel like one-time events, but truly personalized experiences for our learners.

Steve: 15:45 Well, Allie, thank you and I’ll make sure that we have your website posted on the lead-in to this podcast in case folks are out walking as they’re listening and didn’t catch it, they can go there and find it. Thanks again for sharing your thinking and expanding your mind. It was a real pleasure.

Allie: 16:06 Thanks so much, Steve. I appreciate you having me on.

Steve[Outro]: 16:09 Thanks again for listening. You can subscribe to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud on iTunes and Podbean. And please remember to rate and review us on iTunes. I also want to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter @stevebarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.