Episode 49: Love and Literacy
On this episode of Under the Hat, we have the pleasure of having Stephen Chiger back on the show to chat about ALL things education and literacy. Listen in as Stephen talks about his first book Love and Literacy, the importance of this work for all grade levels and subjects, and the need to close learning gaps.
Check out Stephen's website to learn more:
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Welcome to the Under the Hat podcast,
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the show where we talk
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about everything and
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anything that is top of
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mind in education.
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The goal is to provide
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meaningful conversations to
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what is currently happening
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in our classrooms.
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Stories, pains, moments of success.
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We want to hear it all.
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friends welcome back to
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under the hat this is
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episode four nine forty
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nine we're very close to
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hitting this fifty
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milestone here sophie knows
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I'm super excited about
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that um sophie this is your
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like we're this is your
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your we're in season two
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you've almost a full season
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of being here um how's it
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been besides like having
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the unpleasure of working
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with me uh how has it been here
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It's been really interesting.
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I really do enjoy and love
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connecting with like-minded
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people and people who know more than I do,
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which is fascinating.
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I love learning from others
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and the conversations that
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we have about education in
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all subject areas,
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technology and literacy.
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And sometimes we have math
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talks in here because
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Steve's not a big math fan,
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but... What's math?
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And it's been really fun.
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And I love it also when we
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get to bring back
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favorites so uh today we
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have steven chigger and he
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has trained thousands of
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educators in literacy
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instruction at nationally
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taught in high school
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english and journalism for
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more than a decade in new
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jersey now you're directing
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literacy curriculum and
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assessment for multiple
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grades but you're also an
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author and you're getting
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ready to launch your second
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book is that correct
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It is one of my two books,
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but this one's out.
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It's launched.
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It's in the world.
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Yeah, it was the genesis of kind of,
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right.
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So I've talked with you guys
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about Graham and Graham,
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which was my book for kids.
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But this book is for teachers.
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And this book is for
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teachers in secondary English.
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Maybe for like my, like,
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not just my younger self,
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but myself right now.
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It sort of tries to put
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together all the things
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that we've learned kind of
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studying English for kids.
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more than a decade of the
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network I work at at Uncommon Schools,
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where I'm lucky to be at a
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place where we'll say,
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what are our best teachers doing?
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Let's get in their rooms.
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Let's watch them.
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Let's film them.
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Let's observe the film.
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Let's watch the film like
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we're a football coach
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analyzing the different plays being made.
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Let's think about what has
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worked best for kids,
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and then let's share it with everyone.
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so that's really this is
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that yeah yeah I was
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exploring your um love and
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literacy webpage because
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you just have a website
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that is just you author
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speaker literacy nerd love
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it um and um steve I put it
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in the private chat if you
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want to put it in the thing
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but yeah so and like you
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have more than just the
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book you have like videos
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that go along with it that
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showcase teachers
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implementing these practices,
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which is chef's kiss, bravo, yes.
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Well, thank you.
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I want to make sure credit
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is given where credit's due.
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Uncommon is the place that
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originally Teach Like a
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Champion came out of, a Doug Lamov's book,
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where we included a bunch
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of videos with that.
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My co-author for this book,
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Paul Badbrick-Santoyo, who is a genius,
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really, just a brilliant person.
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The model that we use that
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he devised for professional
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development is called see it, name it,
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do it.
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And we feel like if you're
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going to try something new
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in your practice,
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it really helps for you to
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be able to see it.
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That can happen in a live model.
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It can happen by watching
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and analyzing video.
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And it's been a real game changer, I think,
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honestly,
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for my own development as a teacher.
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It changed the game for how
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fast I was able to learn
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new things and be clear
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about what the things were
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and how they were working
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and then try them out myself.
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So we included more than
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twenty videos with the book
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of just like English
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teachers doing their thing.
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And then we kind of discuss
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what it is they're doing
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and why we think it's
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working or why the research
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says it's working and in
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hopes of being able to
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share it so we can all make
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our practice as strong as
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we can in service of our kids.
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I love the the watch watch
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the video like like the sports analogy,
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right, like the
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Because I do know that,
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at least in my area,
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a common practice is
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peer-to-peer teacher
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walkthroughs as a means for development.
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But that can be really challenging, right?
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Like you have to get like sub coverage,
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like who is going, who is like,
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who's doing the modeling,
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who is doing the observing.
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But I love this idea of like,
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I never really thought
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about using this video base
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to really meet the needs of
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the teachers and of the administrators,
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like facilitating the whole thing.
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Could you speak to like
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maybe the effect size on that?
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Like what are maybe like
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some indicators of success
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that you've experienced?
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Oh, sure.
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I mean,
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I wish I could cite you like
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specific effect size
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research off the top of my head on video,
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but I know we're not the
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only organization that's
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using video sort of as a training tool.
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The StepLab folks over in
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the UK are doing it.
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A lot of folks are.
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What I can tell you from my
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own experience and practice
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is that it allows sort of
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everyone in the room to see
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the same thing together.
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and to discuss it together
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um it's the equivalent
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steve of you're one of the
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one of the things I'm lucky
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I'm gifted to get to do
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this in my job is I get to
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visit a school and walk
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around with its principal
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and its superintendent and
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visit classrooms and we all
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like like look together and
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we say wow here are some
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real strengths that we see
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here's the next place that
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we think that we could grow
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or we think we could build
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some training around and
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we've all kind of seen it
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together so it's not like
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oh look I was in the room
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and there was a fire drill
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so that like I didn't see any
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class discussion and I was
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in the room and I was
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actually they were taking a
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quiz so I didn't see any
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you know now it's like okay
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we're all in the room we
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all watch the class
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discussion and here's like
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here's what's so beautiful
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about it here's maybe one
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step uh to consider for the
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next level um and doing it
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in for there's professional
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development live uh or
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doing it by having a plc
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say on a book that includes
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videos allows you to say
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okay like let's watch a segment of class
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um we always ask guiding
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questions beforehand
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usually the standard one is
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really just like what do
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you see the teacher say and
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do uh in this clip right
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that's like the baseline
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questions unless we change
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them and we adjust it if
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there's a specific thing
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but um the nice thing about
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video is it it lets you
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kind of manage your working
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memory as as an adult right
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we only have so much
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cognitive capacity to make
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sense of things so to use
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your example steve like if
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I here's what here's what
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sometimes can happen
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And I speak about this from
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my own experience as a coach, right?
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Like younger me would have said, okay,
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I'm coaching this teacher.
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I really want them to see
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great instruction.
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So I send them to our best
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English teachers classroom,
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like just go and watch,
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let me know what you see.
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Maybe I made them a note taking template.
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And what happens is a couple
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of possibilities.
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One,
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they see like seven thousand things
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and they're overwhelmed.
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Like they don't even notice
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the systems that the
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teacher had because they're
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just so excited that like, I don't know,
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students are like sharing
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with each other.
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There actually is some cool research.
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I wish I could I can find
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the name of the study and send it to you,
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like where they looked at
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the eye movements of like
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teachers with a lot of experience,
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teachers with less experience.
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And the teachers who have
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more experience would like
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scan the room and be able to like
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like like just look at
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different things the
00:07:54.463 --> 00:07:55.262
teacher with teachers with
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less experience would be
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like distracted by
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someone's like fluorescent
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shoelaces uh that's not a
00:07:59.384 --> 00:08:01.586
dig on on younger teacher
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newer teachers we were all
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new teachers at some point
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in our career right but
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over time you hone your eye
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so one thing that happens
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is like you're just like
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I'm not sure what to look
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for there's so much going
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on I can't keep track of it
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the other thing and this I
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call this the iceberg problem
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And I don't think I invented
00:08:15.314 --> 00:08:16.516
that terminology,
00:08:16.555 --> 00:08:19.019
but it's how I like to think of it.
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You go in and you watch this room.
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And I'm thinking about my mentor.
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I'd watch her teach.
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And she'd ask some question.
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The kids would just have
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this beautiful conversation.
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And I'm like, wow,
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Beth asked a broad question
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and her kids just dove in and nailed it.
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I'm going to do that tomorrow.
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And I'll go in my room and
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I'll ask my broad question.
00:08:35.364 --> 00:08:36.764
And suddenly it's crickets
00:08:37.144 --> 00:08:38.025
or weird stuff's happening.
00:08:38.046 --> 00:08:39.025
Because what I didn't see
00:08:39.086 --> 00:08:40.167
was all the work that
00:08:40.206 --> 00:08:42.328
happened way back in September,
00:08:42.369 --> 00:08:44.590
way back maybe late August, October,
00:08:44.929 --> 00:08:46.191
that allows that when I
00:08:46.311 --> 00:08:47.552
visit in November to see
00:08:47.591 --> 00:08:49.072
this beautiful looking conversation.
00:08:49.092 --> 00:08:49.634
And I think...
00:08:50.274 --> 00:08:51.294
it's really hard to get
00:08:51.355 --> 00:08:53.336
under the hood of a classroom,
00:08:53.356 --> 00:08:54.278
because usually by the time
00:08:54.298 --> 00:08:54.798
you're visiting,
00:08:54.859 --> 00:08:56.159
those things have already been done.
00:08:56.399 --> 00:08:57.461
So it looks like it's seamless,
00:08:57.500 --> 00:08:58.302
even though it wasn't.
00:08:58.621 --> 00:09:01.164
And you're like, oh, this classroom,
00:09:01.264 --> 00:09:02.166
it happens this way.
00:09:02.206 --> 00:09:02.905
But you don't see all the
00:09:02.946 --> 00:09:03.807
work that the teacher did
00:09:03.826 --> 00:09:04.508
to build that kind of
00:09:04.548 --> 00:09:05.469
culture and community.
00:09:05.489 --> 00:09:06.269
And one of the things I like
00:09:06.289 --> 00:09:07.250
about video is, well,
00:09:07.270 --> 00:09:08.611
we can deliberately go out
00:09:08.631 --> 00:09:09.293
and try to film that.
00:09:11.092 --> 00:09:13.014
Or we can film the class,
00:09:13.033 --> 00:09:14.333
but we can trim the video down.
00:09:14.453 --> 00:09:16.554
Usually the videos we show in a training,
00:09:16.894 --> 00:09:18.134
three minutes roughly,
00:09:18.414 --> 00:09:19.336
sometimes a little bit more,
00:09:19.355 --> 00:09:20.255
sometimes a little bit less,
00:09:20.316 --> 00:09:20.855
but like we can say,
00:09:20.875 --> 00:09:21.796
let's narrow our focus to
00:09:21.816 --> 00:09:23.716
this moment so we're not overwhelmed.
00:09:24.616 --> 00:09:25.437
And we can talk about just
00:09:25.456 --> 00:09:26.977
like this move and its implications,
00:09:26.998 --> 00:09:29.357
which is kind of fun.
00:09:29.918 --> 00:09:33.158
I almost like going back, Sophie, go ahead,
00:09:33.359 --> 00:09:33.639
go ahead.
00:09:33.658 --> 00:09:36.259
I just, the whole idea of like,
00:09:37.048 --> 00:09:37.788
A teacher walks into the
00:09:37.827 --> 00:09:38.548
room and they're distracted
00:09:38.568 --> 00:09:39.528
by literally everything
00:09:39.568 --> 00:09:40.249
because there's so many
00:09:40.288 --> 00:09:41.230
different things going on.
00:09:41.269 --> 00:09:43.650
There's a certain protocol, a routine,
00:09:43.711 --> 00:09:45.511
a color coding system that
00:09:46.272 --> 00:09:47.331
that teacher has
00:09:47.972 --> 00:09:49.773
implemented that might be
00:09:49.852 --> 00:09:50.394
really important.
00:09:50.413 --> 00:09:51.413
It might have nothing to do
00:09:51.433 --> 00:09:53.554
with the lesson that was going on there.
00:09:53.794 --> 00:09:55.155
But you're noticing all of that stuff,
00:09:55.176 --> 00:09:56.535
especially if you, like you said,
00:09:56.716 --> 00:09:58.256
are a newer teacher and you
00:09:58.277 --> 00:09:59.378
haven't trained to see what
00:09:59.477 --> 00:10:00.278
you're looking for.
00:10:01.219 --> 00:10:02.179
But the fact that you have
00:10:02.220 --> 00:10:03.740
the videos there also is
00:10:03.780 --> 00:10:05.282
just really accommodating
00:10:05.663 --> 00:10:08.325
because you talked about working memory.
00:10:08.544 --> 00:10:11.047
People with ADHD have a very
00:10:11.147 --> 00:10:12.768
limited working memory.
00:10:13.589 --> 00:10:14.690
And so being able to just
00:10:14.730 --> 00:10:17.011
rewatch it again to see
00:10:17.052 --> 00:10:17.831
what their peers are
00:10:18.113 --> 00:10:19.413
potentially even talking about,
00:10:19.913 --> 00:10:21.274
because I forgot that what
00:10:21.315 --> 00:10:22.375
was going on there is
00:10:22.456 --> 00:10:23.576
extremely powerful and
00:10:23.596 --> 00:10:25.958
allows even just so much.
00:10:26.259 --> 00:10:28.179
Like it's just accessible to learn.
00:10:28.280 --> 00:10:30.022
All of everyone can be can watch it again.
00:10:30.423 --> 00:10:31.927
before or even after and as
00:10:31.947 --> 00:10:33.049
many times as they need to
00:10:33.110 --> 00:10:35.917
to see how that happened
00:10:35.937 --> 00:10:37.139
and to catch that lesson.
00:10:37.179 --> 00:10:37.980
And I think that is just
00:10:38.042 --> 00:10:38.842
extremely powerful.
00:10:39.599 --> 00:10:41.799
It makes me feel good to hear, Sophie,
00:10:41.840 --> 00:10:43.922
because I know for me,
00:10:43.961 --> 00:10:45.903
and I can't believe I'm admitting this,
00:10:46.342 --> 00:10:49.004
but I guess I used to be a journalist.
00:10:49.426 --> 00:10:50.666
I don't consider myself the
00:10:50.706 --> 00:10:52.287
most observant human being in the world.
00:10:52.368 --> 00:10:53.447
I used to deliberately ask a
00:10:53.488 --> 00:10:55.168
question that didn't matter.
00:10:55.229 --> 00:10:56.570
I'd ask about something that
00:10:56.649 --> 00:10:58.631
I knew wouldn't matter at all,
00:10:58.672 --> 00:10:59.511
just so I can pause and
00:10:59.532 --> 00:11:00.352
take a moment and look
00:11:00.393 --> 00:11:01.273
around the room and see if
00:11:01.293 --> 00:11:01.953
there was any interesting
00:11:02.094 --> 00:11:04.716
objects or try to give
00:11:04.755 --> 00:11:06.096
myself a little mental space.
00:11:06.836 --> 00:11:08.018
My wife is super observant.
00:11:08.118 --> 00:11:09.019
We put a movie on.
00:11:09.778 --> 00:11:10.559
And she'll be like,
00:11:10.899 --> 00:11:12.000
that's the that's the killer.
00:11:12.019 --> 00:11:12.600
And you can tell because
00:11:12.620 --> 00:11:13.421
this isn't like the first
00:11:13.441 --> 00:11:14.361
like ten minutes of the movie.
00:11:14.422 --> 00:11:14.961
And meanwhile,
00:11:15.042 --> 00:11:16.022
I'm like surprised every
00:11:16.062 --> 00:11:17.503
time we even rewatch it.
00:11:18.703 --> 00:11:20.424
But like what I like about
00:11:20.485 --> 00:11:21.365
this and what I feel makes
00:11:21.384 --> 00:11:22.186
it accessible is like the
00:11:22.245 --> 00:11:23.125
idea is like if I have this
00:11:23.166 --> 00:11:24.147
video and I've been to a
00:11:24.187 --> 00:11:25.346
training and I've learned
00:11:25.366 --> 00:11:26.268
this or I've read this
00:11:26.307 --> 00:11:27.869
chapter and I've learned it now,
00:11:27.928 --> 00:11:28.668
I can share it with you.
00:11:28.708 --> 00:11:29.669
We can watch it together.
00:11:30.590 --> 00:11:31.730
We can watch it more than once.
00:11:32.091 --> 00:11:33.892
We can slow ourselves down
00:11:33.932 --> 00:11:35.373
and think about the actual
00:11:35.393 --> 00:11:36.133
moves and we can debate
00:11:36.173 --> 00:11:37.793
like often we'll see different things.
00:11:38.856 --> 00:11:39.758
And I also love that you
00:11:39.778 --> 00:11:40.538
could just pause it.
00:11:40.839 --> 00:11:41.840
So like when you actually go
00:11:41.879 --> 00:11:43.201
in and observe something live,
00:11:43.361 --> 00:11:44.883
you can't just pause
00:11:45.543 --> 00:11:46.745
something really amazing
00:11:46.784 --> 00:11:48.006
just was said or happened
00:11:48.047 --> 00:11:48.888
or a student did something
00:11:48.908 --> 00:11:49.548
really cool or a
00:11:49.607 --> 00:11:50.889
redirection just happened and you're like,
00:11:50.909 --> 00:11:51.770
wait a second, wow.
00:11:52.250 --> 00:11:53.633
You can't pause that live.
00:11:54.405 --> 00:11:55.866
and talk about it, what just happened,
00:11:55.886 --> 00:11:57.087
but you can with the video.
00:11:57.148 --> 00:11:57.788
And I think that's really,
00:11:57.947 --> 00:11:59.129
that's also really powerful.
00:11:59.909 --> 00:12:01.691
Ah, yes.
00:12:01.711 --> 00:12:03.152
Wife's a good pattern,
00:12:03.272 --> 00:12:04.812
pattern recognizer is
00:12:04.873 --> 00:12:05.793
what's going on there.
00:12:06.134 --> 00:12:06.313
Yeah.
00:12:06.333 --> 00:12:07.193
She's my better half.
00:12:07.214 --> 00:12:09.015
There's, there's no better,
00:12:09.056 --> 00:12:10.576
like three quarters really in our,
00:12:10.616 --> 00:12:12.518
in our marriage.
00:12:12.538 --> 00:12:13.317
But, you know,
00:12:13.477 --> 00:12:14.399
the other thing that video
00:12:14.418 --> 00:12:16.580
could be cool for, and I think it for,
00:12:17.301 --> 00:12:17.701
you know,
00:12:18.100 --> 00:12:19.822
I can think about my own practice, right?
00:12:19.842 --> 00:12:20.023
Like,
00:12:21.133 --> 00:12:23.634
I, earlier in my career, I'm a loquacious,
00:12:23.735 --> 00:12:24.335
I like to talk.
00:12:25.015 --> 00:12:26.876
And I made like the common,
00:12:26.976 --> 00:12:28.057
I think it's a common teacher error,
00:12:28.077 --> 00:12:29.038
it was certainly my error,
00:12:29.458 --> 00:12:30.419
where like in my brain was like,
00:12:30.460 --> 00:12:31.400
the more I'm talking is the
00:12:31.441 --> 00:12:32.160
more I'm teaching.
00:12:32.341 --> 00:12:34.042
If I'm talking, like I'm doing teaching,
00:12:34.082 --> 00:12:34.263
right?
00:12:34.562 --> 00:12:37.384
And sometimes that's true, right?
00:12:37.424 --> 00:12:38.365
Like sometimes you're doing
00:12:38.405 --> 00:12:39.546
direct instruction and you
00:12:39.586 --> 00:12:40.567
want like a really clear
00:12:40.606 --> 00:12:41.388
model and like you should
00:12:41.427 --> 00:12:42.749
be talking to do the model.
00:12:43.129 --> 00:12:43.769
And there's other times
00:12:43.789 --> 00:12:44.470
where kids are having a
00:12:44.529 --> 00:12:45.431
conversation and you're
00:12:45.490 --> 00:12:46.731
just interrupting and
00:12:46.751 --> 00:12:47.732
you're just like getting in the way.
00:12:47.753 --> 00:12:48.693
You're over scaffolding.
00:12:48.714 --> 00:12:48.953
Right.
00:12:48.974 --> 00:12:50.335
So I filmed myself.
00:12:51.316 --> 00:12:52.437
My coach at the time suggested this.
00:12:52.456 --> 00:12:53.018
She was so right.
00:12:53.337 --> 00:12:55.440
I filmed myself for like ten
00:12:55.460 --> 00:12:56.760
minutes of class conversation.
00:12:56.880 --> 00:12:58.182
And then I watched it with
00:12:58.302 --> 00:12:58.822
you can get like one of
00:12:58.842 --> 00:12:59.783
those free chess timers
00:12:59.844 --> 00:13:00.705
online where like you hit
00:13:00.725 --> 00:13:02.066
the button when you're
00:13:02.086 --> 00:13:03.167
talking and it starts timing.
00:13:03.187 --> 00:13:04.467
Then you hit the other side
00:13:04.508 --> 00:13:05.509
when the kids are talking.
00:13:05.528 --> 00:13:07.129
And I just want to see what
00:13:07.149 --> 00:13:08.571
percentage of the discourse was me.
00:13:09.331 --> 00:13:10.331
and what percentage was them.
00:13:10.613 --> 00:13:12.493
And it was, I don't even, I,
00:13:13.092 --> 00:13:15.134
it was so like just shaking
00:13:15.413 --> 00:13:16.254
to see how much of the
00:13:16.375 --> 00:13:17.615
airspace I was filling up.
00:13:18.075 --> 00:13:19.176
It like almost overnight
00:13:19.216 --> 00:13:20.395
changed my practice where I'm like,
00:13:20.416 --> 00:13:21.937
oh my God, I thought I was good.
00:13:21.956 --> 00:13:22.677
They kind of like asked a
00:13:22.697 --> 00:13:23.677
couple of questions and the
00:13:23.697 --> 00:13:24.998
kids didn't like talking and it was like,
00:13:25.758 --> 00:13:26.778
ninety percent me or
00:13:27.058 --> 00:13:28.139
something that was so like
00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:29.659
jarring to me earlier in my
00:13:29.701 --> 00:13:30.660
career that I'm like I'm
00:13:30.701 --> 00:13:31.961
going to make a change and
00:13:31.981 --> 00:13:32.841
honestly part of love and
00:13:32.881 --> 00:13:33.962
literacy was like okay so
00:13:33.982 --> 00:13:35.443
like if if you feel that
00:13:35.464 --> 00:13:36.445
way or you think you'd like
00:13:36.465 --> 00:13:37.445
to make a change like what
00:13:37.485 --> 00:13:39.466
can what can you do right
00:13:39.485 --> 00:13:40.226
because one of one of our
00:13:40.246 --> 00:13:41.307
takeaways is if you want to
00:13:41.347 --> 00:13:42.648
maximize student talk you
00:13:42.668 --> 00:13:43.729
have to minimize your own
00:13:44.068 --> 00:13:45.970
and that was a uh that was
00:13:45.990 --> 00:13:47.331
a growth point on my own
00:13:47.350 --> 00:13:48.631
journey in my own classroom
00:13:49.389 --> 00:13:51.691
yeah I so that's that's a
00:13:51.711 --> 00:13:54.273
good segue I feel um so
00:13:54.472 --> 00:13:56.094
with respect to the book if
00:13:56.215 --> 00:13:57.816
somebody is gonna pick this
00:13:57.875 --> 00:14:00.738
up for the first time um
00:14:00.758 --> 00:14:01.778
what should they expect
00:14:01.879 --> 00:14:03.259
like is it very like
00:14:04.041 --> 00:14:05.662
pedagogy centered like is
00:14:05.721 --> 00:14:07.583
it like what is if you can
00:14:07.624 --> 00:14:09.144
just unpack of what the
00:14:09.245 --> 00:14:11.326
expectations of it would be
00:14:11.346 --> 00:14:13.788
that'd be great yeah um
00:14:15.129 --> 00:14:17.090
I think this is a book that
00:14:18.409 --> 00:14:19.130
you would look at if you
00:14:19.171 --> 00:14:20.731
are an English teacher or
00:14:20.812 --> 00:14:22.111
someone who has a lot of
00:14:22.172 --> 00:14:23.393
discourse in your class or
00:14:23.413 --> 00:14:24.352
has questions about reading
00:14:24.393 --> 00:14:26.354
comprehension and you're in secondary,
00:14:27.193 --> 00:14:28.375
this is a book that might interest you.
00:14:28.514 --> 00:14:29.875
Or if you're a coach and
00:14:29.895 --> 00:14:31.196
you're looking for, okay,
00:14:31.255 --> 00:14:32.456
to Sophie's point, what are some videos?
00:14:32.476 --> 00:14:33.157
What are some things I can
00:14:33.256 --> 00:14:37.639
use to train my team?
00:14:38.499 --> 00:14:39.500
It kind of picks up.
00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:42.981
I'll tell you what it doesn't talk about,
00:14:43.261 --> 00:14:44.081
then I'll tell you what it does.
00:14:44.221 --> 00:14:46.543
This comes after you've done the work on,
00:14:46.583 --> 00:14:48.104
say, fluency and decoding and all those.
00:14:48.264 --> 00:14:49.424
Those are super important.
00:14:49.784 --> 00:14:51.105
I would never wish for any
00:14:51.145 --> 00:14:51.966
of your listeners to think
00:14:52.006 --> 00:14:53.466
that those things are not paramount.
00:14:54.067 --> 00:14:54.548
I don't think they get
00:14:54.707 --> 00:14:55.688
nearly enough attention.
00:14:55.749 --> 00:14:56.208
I don't think they get
00:14:56.249 --> 00:14:57.009
nearly enough attention in
00:14:57.048 --> 00:14:57.830
the secondary grades.
00:14:57.850 --> 00:14:59.350
They think we have data to
00:14:59.431 --> 00:15:01.572
say this is a real gap for
00:15:01.631 --> 00:15:02.392
students and it's a gap
00:15:02.412 --> 00:15:03.113
that we can close.
00:15:03.893 --> 00:15:04.994
And it's a gap that we can't say, oh,
00:15:05.014 --> 00:15:06.114
they're not in elementary anymore,
00:15:06.173 --> 00:15:07.075
so we're in good shape.
00:15:07.294 --> 00:15:08.995
I don't think that was ever true,
00:15:09.035 --> 00:15:10.136
and folks, we had a pandemic,
00:15:10.177 --> 00:15:11.758
so you know it's not true now, right?
00:15:11.798 --> 00:15:12.818
That's the world we live in,
00:15:13.240 --> 00:15:14.220
and you meet kids where you are.
00:15:14.441 --> 00:15:16.081
But the focus of this book is, okay,
00:15:16.142 --> 00:15:17.962
so let's talk about comprehension.
00:15:18.484 --> 00:15:19.625
If you have questions about, like,
00:15:19.705 --> 00:15:21.566
what can I do to enhance
00:15:21.725 --> 00:15:23.727
reading comprehension for my students?
00:15:24.948 --> 00:15:26.230
How could I make that stronger?
00:15:27.010 --> 00:15:28.030
If fluency and decoding are
00:15:28.051 --> 00:15:28.991
in pretty good shape or for
00:15:29.011 --> 00:15:30.133
the interventions that I have,
00:15:30.553 --> 00:15:31.855
those are in hand,
00:15:32.315 --> 00:15:33.716
what are some other things that I can do?
00:15:34.197 --> 00:15:35.597
It's a book that you would
00:15:35.638 --> 00:15:36.379
look at if you want to say,
00:15:36.479 --> 00:15:38.539
what can I do to improve
00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:40.601
student discourse in my classroom?
00:15:40.642 --> 00:15:41.482
If I want to make class
00:15:41.523 --> 00:15:44.625
conversations stronger at all levels from
00:15:45.326 --> 00:15:46.369
I want kids to just talk to
00:15:46.389 --> 00:15:47.812
each other more all the way
00:15:47.871 --> 00:15:49.875
up to I want to my kids are
00:15:49.895 --> 00:15:50.517
doing a good job.
00:15:50.537 --> 00:15:51.438
They have a good conversation,
00:15:51.458 --> 00:15:51.980
but then they kind of
00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:52.721
plateau and I don't know
00:15:52.740 --> 00:15:54.283
what to do to get them to the next level.
00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:57.142
Um, it's a book where you're like, okay,
00:15:57.201 --> 00:15:58.302
what are some like moves
00:15:58.322 --> 00:16:00.543
that teachers have made to, uh,
00:16:00.624 --> 00:16:01.965
improve the culture of
00:16:02.004 --> 00:16:04.025
their ELA program and their schools?
00:16:04.046 --> 00:16:04.826
Like what are things that I
00:16:04.846 --> 00:16:05.767
can do in class?
00:16:06.047 --> 00:16:06.788
And to Sophie's point, like,
00:16:07.148 --> 00:16:08.428
can you be as concrete as
00:16:08.448 --> 00:16:09.408
you can and show me an
00:16:09.469 --> 00:16:10.490
example or give me a
00:16:10.529 --> 00:16:12.370
document or there's a whole
00:16:12.410 --> 00:16:13.192
like reading and writing
00:16:13.231 --> 00:16:14.091
handbook that comes with a
00:16:14.111 --> 00:16:15.052
book that you can download
00:16:15.092 --> 00:16:16.312
online so that I have this,
00:16:16.352 --> 00:16:17.494
so I can be practical.
00:16:17.573 --> 00:16:19.936
because our goal is like
00:16:19.975 --> 00:16:21.015
practical solutions.
00:16:22.277 --> 00:16:23.837
I think that like, you know,
00:16:24.018 --> 00:16:25.620
probably left to my own devices,
00:16:25.740 --> 00:16:29.201
it would be a nerdy philosophical tome.
00:16:29.721 --> 00:16:31.724
But Paul is my co-author and
00:16:31.783 --> 00:16:32.563
also my mentor.
00:16:33.985 --> 00:16:34.166
You know,
00:16:34.206 --> 00:16:35.647
he always pushes like what can we
00:16:35.807 --> 00:16:36.447
where does where's the
00:16:36.486 --> 00:16:37.087
rubber hit the road?
00:16:37.107 --> 00:16:38.087
What can we share with
00:16:38.148 --> 00:16:39.068
people that will help them
00:16:39.109 --> 00:16:40.970
improve their craft tomorrow?
00:16:41.289 --> 00:16:42.171
And it's something I love
00:16:42.191 --> 00:16:43.111
about the work that I get
00:16:43.152 --> 00:16:46.073
to do is that it is high thinking.
00:16:46.474 --> 00:16:46.653
You know,
00:16:46.673 --> 00:16:47.793
I do get to read research and
00:16:47.835 --> 00:16:50.475
think about it and pace about, you know,
00:16:51.115 --> 00:16:52.096
out of my home in the late
00:16:52.135 --> 00:16:52.855
hours of the night.
00:16:52.875 --> 00:16:54.856
But I also get to work with
00:16:54.897 --> 00:16:56.297
teachers and see it in action.
00:16:56.317 --> 00:16:56.977
And the thing that I would
00:16:56.998 --> 00:16:59.359
want people to know is this isn't like,
00:16:59.379 --> 00:17:01.058
you know, my opinion doesn't matter.
00:17:01.078 --> 00:17:01.739
I'm just some guy.
00:17:01.759 --> 00:17:01.899
Right.
00:17:01.938 --> 00:17:03.019
But what this is, is
00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:04.961
it kind of ties into some of
00:17:05.001 --> 00:17:05.982
the work I did with younger
00:17:06.002 --> 00:17:07.084
in my career where I was a
00:17:07.124 --> 00:17:08.625
reporter and basically it's
00:17:08.705 --> 00:17:10.207
reportorial we go into
00:17:10.267 --> 00:17:11.368
rooms we look at what
00:17:11.388 --> 00:17:12.829
people are doing and we say
00:17:12.869 --> 00:17:13.871
this is this is what this
00:17:13.891 --> 00:17:15.012
person's doing and this is
00:17:15.373 --> 00:17:16.934
this is why we understand
00:17:16.954 --> 00:17:17.675
to be working and this is
00:17:17.695 --> 00:17:18.316
what we've tried with our
00:17:18.355 --> 00:17:19.096
schools and this is what
00:17:19.116 --> 00:17:21.700
has worked when we've tried it so it's um
00:17:22.381 --> 00:17:24.121
I always say to folks,
00:17:24.520 --> 00:17:25.521
it's not a Mandalorian thing.
00:17:25.541 --> 00:17:26.461
It's not this is the way.
00:17:26.701 --> 00:17:27.981
There's many ways to be an
00:17:28.001 --> 00:17:28.922
amazing English teacher.
00:17:28.942 --> 00:17:29.642
But this is a way.
00:17:30.182 --> 00:17:31.202
And it's a way that we've seen work.
00:17:31.242 --> 00:17:32.282
And it's worked for a lot of people.
00:17:32.363 --> 00:17:33.002
And we're going to break it
00:17:33.022 --> 00:17:35.343
down for you so that you can use it,
00:17:35.383 --> 00:17:36.824
you can steal it, you can adapt it.
00:17:37.663 --> 00:17:38.963
And most importantly,
00:17:39.183 --> 00:17:40.284
you can make it work for your kids.
00:17:40.403 --> 00:17:41.785
Because the whole theme of this book,
00:17:41.884 --> 00:17:43.505
if I had to stand on one
00:17:43.545 --> 00:17:45.164
foot and just say it,
00:17:45.525 --> 00:17:47.526
it's the kids can't fall in
00:17:47.566 --> 00:17:48.986
love with things they don't understand.
00:17:49.673 --> 00:17:50.532
Right.
00:17:50.553 --> 00:17:51.854
Love comes from understanding.
00:17:52.173 --> 00:17:53.234
And this book really is
00:17:53.275 --> 00:17:54.395
about like we called it
00:17:54.455 --> 00:17:56.036
Love and Literacy because
00:17:56.076 --> 00:17:57.817
it really is fundamentally about love.
00:17:57.896 --> 00:17:58.778
All of us join this
00:17:58.817 --> 00:18:01.759
profession because we love our content.
00:18:01.779 --> 00:18:02.539
We love our kids.
00:18:02.660 --> 00:18:03.780
And I would argue we fell in
00:18:03.800 --> 00:18:04.361
love with the idea of a
00:18:04.401 --> 00:18:05.500
better world that we wanted
00:18:05.521 --> 00:18:06.342
to be a part of building.
00:18:07.272 --> 00:18:08.934
And so if we want our kids
00:18:08.954 --> 00:18:09.615
to find that love,
00:18:09.654 --> 00:18:10.516
if we want them to find a
00:18:10.576 --> 00:18:11.596
home in the humanities,
00:18:11.616 --> 00:18:13.239
to feel that it is for them
00:18:13.558 --> 00:18:14.680
and that it includes them, right?
00:18:14.700 --> 00:18:15.580
We talk a little bit about
00:18:15.661 --> 00:18:16.721
curriculum building and why
00:18:16.761 --> 00:18:18.323
it's important to think
00:18:18.343 --> 00:18:19.203
about different components
00:18:19.243 --> 00:18:20.244
of complexity when you
00:18:20.285 --> 00:18:21.185
build your curriculum.
00:18:21.506 --> 00:18:23.127
If we want our kids to feel
00:18:23.667 --> 00:18:25.170
at home in the world,
00:18:26.210 --> 00:18:26.871
and know that they have
00:18:26.911 --> 00:18:28.431
these opportunities open to them,
00:18:28.451 --> 00:18:29.211
that they could walk into
00:18:29.311 --> 00:18:30.451
any library or bookstore
00:18:30.491 --> 00:18:31.633
and nothing is off limits
00:18:31.932 --> 00:18:33.173
and they can choose their
00:18:33.212 --> 00:18:34.394
own path and their own destiny,
00:18:34.453 --> 00:18:37.414
then the goal of this book
00:18:37.515 --> 00:18:39.375
is to try to build all the
00:18:39.435 --> 00:18:40.076
components in an
00:18:40.135 --> 00:18:41.017
educational program that
00:18:41.037 --> 00:18:41.836
would help do that.
00:18:41.876 --> 00:18:44.278
So it's sort of a tour of
00:18:44.317 --> 00:18:45.179
some of the highlights of
00:18:45.219 --> 00:18:46.558
things that we have learned in the last,
00:18:46.618 --> 00:18:46.838
you know,
00:18:46.898 --> 00:18:49.059
fifteen plus twenty years of
00:18:49.099 --> 00:18:50.000
just trying to study
00:18:50.221 --> 00:18:51.560
English instruction and
00:18:51.602 --> 00:18:52.481
then share what we're seeing.
00:18:55.144 --> 00:18:57.086
That's, yeah, that's powerful.
00:18:58.326 --> 00:18:59.707
And I would also venture to say,
00:18:59.727 --> 00:19:01.807
and I know that this is top
00:19:01.847 --> 00:19:03.209
of mind with Sophie,
00:19:03.528 --> 00:19:06.951
is like this learning of
00:19:07.070 --> 00:19:09.791
literacy is so important
00:19:09.893 --> 00:19:14.734
even beyond the ELA classroom, right?
00:19:14.795 --> 00:19:17.195
So I'm just curious, like, you know,
00:19:17.516 --> 00:19:18.636
is there anything in the
00:19:18.696 --> 00:19:22.358
book explicit or not of
00:19:22.419 --> 00:19:24.180
like what this looks like
00:19:25.378 --> 00:19:28.481
across the subjects right um
00:19:28.521 --> 00:19:29.323
particularly things like
00:19:29.403 --> 00:19:31.404
math right like literacy
00:19:31.464 --> 00:19:33.686
should very it be very
00:19:33.747 --> 00:19:35.107
prevalent in a math class
00:19:35.127 --> 00:19:36.368
just as it would like in a
00:19:36.409 --> 00:19:39.632
history class can I just
00:19:39.672 --> 00:19:40.353
add something real quick
00:19:40.373 --> 00:19:42.174
before you answer really um
00:19:43.222 --> 00:19:44.223
because there are things
00:19:44.263 --> 00:19:45.204
definitely that I think
00:19:45.224 --> 00:19:46.105
just listening to you and
00:19:46.144 --> 00:19:48.027
reading the site that would
00:19:48.106 --> 00:19:49.667
cross over immediately,
00:19:49.728 --> 00:19:51.028
like creating a classroom
00:19:51.068 --> 00:19:53.070
culture that sings is not
00:19:53.191 --> 00:19:54.951
just English classroom based.
00:19:55.452 --> 00:19:56.373
Building discourse for
00:19:56.413 --> 00:19:58.115
student agency and voice is
00:19:58.255 --> 00:20:00.576
not just English classroom based.
00:20:00.616 --> 00:20:00.916
You can,
00:20:01.096 --> 00:20:02.458
like I'm already seeing like how
00:20:02.478 --> 00:20:03.659
this can cross over into
00:20:03.759 --> 00:20:05.240
more than just an English classroom,
00:20:05.601 --> 00:20:08.542
but there is literacy in
00:20:08.563 --> 00:20:10.545
every single subject.
00:20:10.625 --> 00:20:10.785
Yeah.
00:20:11.198 --> 00:20:12.138
learn to read,
00:20:12.159 --> 00:20:14.142
but then you're reading to learn.
00:20:14.281 --> 00:20:15.383
So then there is literacy in
00:20:15.423 --> 00:20:16.163
every single subject.
00:20:16.203 --> 00:20:17.705
So now that I've said that,
00:20:20.446 --> 00:20:23.048
I feel like you guys are all
00:20:23.087 --> 00:20:23.688
the way there.
00:20:24.508 --> 00:20:25.508
I couldn't agree with you more.
00:20:26.988 --> 00:20:27.528
I would say,
00:20:28.048 --> 00:20:29.509
there's two answers to the question,
00:20:29.528 --> 00:20:29.848
right?
00:20:29.888 --> 00:20:30.308
In fairness,
00:20:30.469 --> 00:20:31.449
the videos that we're using
00:20:31.628 --> 00:20:32.909
are of English instruction
00:20:32.929 --> 00:20:34.369
because that's sort of my
00:20:34.390 --> 00:20:34.950
seat on the bus.
00:20:35.309 --> 00:20:36.049
That's my work.
00:20:36.130 --> 00:20:36.910
At the same time,
00:20:38.049 --> 00:20:39.171
you are totally right that
00:20:39.191 --> 00:20:40.330
when I go out and do
00:20:40.351 --> 00:20:41.851
trainings for schools and often,
00:20:41.871 --> 00:20:42.550
sometimes they'll say we
00:20:42.570 --> 00:20:43.471
just want our ELA teachers.
00:20:43.491 --> 00:20:44.811
Sometimes we're like, actually, we want...
00:20:46.332 --> 00:20:47.692
all of our teachers or all
00:20:47.712 --> 00:20:48.653
of our humanities teachers,
00:20:48.673 --> 00:20:49.813
and we want science and history,
00:20:50.314 --> 00:20:51.653
these things are applicable
00:20:51.733 --> 00:20:52.894
across content areas.
00:20:53.214 --> 00:20:54.894
The discourse work that we
00:20:54.934 --> 00:20:56.576
share actually came from,
00:20:56.915 --> 00:20:57.997
we call them working groups.
00:20:58.076 --> 00:20:58.297
Basically,
00:20:58.317 --> 00:20:59.537
we gather some of our highest
00:20:59.576 --> 00:21:02.838
performing teachers and our
00:21:03.019 --> 00:21:03.919
most experienced,
00:21:03.959 --> 00:21:05.539
insightful principals and
00:21:05.640 --> 00:21:06.259
people who are really
00:21:06.299 --> 00:21:07.000
excited about topics and
00:21:07.039 --> 00:21:08.441
get a big room of people together and say,
00:21:08.500 --> 00:21:08.721
okay,
00:21:09.641 --> 00:21:10.480
let's talk about this.
00:21:10.521 --> 00:21:11.582
And when we talked about discourse,
00:21:11.602 --> 00:21:13.083
we didn't talk about it as just English.
00:21:13.143 --> 00:21:14.343
We talked about it as
00:21:14.663 --> 00:21:16.903
K-Twelve cross content.
00:21:17.243 --> 00:21:18.765
Like this is just stuff that's good.
00:21:18.865 --> 00:21:20.484
The principles are good for kids.
00:21:20.505 --> 00:21:21.846
So some of the examples, again,
00:21:22.125 --> 00:21:22.925
like you're going to have
00:21:22.945 --> 00:21:24.207
to read me talking about a
00:21:24.267 --> 00:21:26.448
poem or the great Gatsby and, and,
00:21:26.488 --> 00:21:26.788
you know,
00:21:27.407 --> 00:21:29.068
But if you can make it through that,
00:21:29.169 --> 00:21:32.530
the principles apply.
00:21:33.771 --> 00:21:34.913
Someone asked me a while back,
00:21:34.952 --> 00:21:35.393
they're like,
00:21:35.692 --> 00:21:37.714
what is a move that we could make?
00:21:38.035 --> 00:21:40.076
We've done all these things for ELA,
00:21:40.096 --> 00:21:40.997
what are some moves that we
00:21:41.017 --> 00:21:42.917
can make to improve
00:21:43.038 --> 00:21:43.959
literacy even further?
00:21:43.999 --> 00:21:44.239
I'm like,
00:21:44.278 --> 00:21:45.700
invest in your science and your
00:21:45.740 --> 00:21:47.540
history classes and your math classes.
00:21:49.342 --> 00:21:51.002
We know from research that
00:21:51.042 --> 00:21:52.263
the more knowledge kids have,
00:21:52.324 --> 00:21:53.805
the better able they are to read.
00:21:54.486 --> 00:21:57.167
So to your point, first you learn to read,
00:21:57.409 --> 00:21:58.169
then you read to learn,
00:21:58.189 --> 00:21:59.490
then you have to know stuff
00:21:59.711 --> 00:22:00.731
to learn more stuff.
00:22:02.253 --> 00:22:04.115
It's a finding in cognitive science
00:22:04.932 --> 00:22:05.992
that is getting more and
00:22:06.032 --> 00:22:07.173
more attention and more and
00:22:07.192 --> 00:22:08.374
more press it's super
00:22:08.433 --> 00:22:09.795
important because what it
00:22:09.894 --> 00:22:11.415
lets us know is is that
00:22:11.435 --> 00:22:13.336
like we can't skimp on the
00:22:13.436 --> 00:22:14.397
actual like knowledge
00:22:14.417 --> 00:22:15.637
building we need to do as
00:22:15.758 --> 00:22:17.419
educators it seems like
00:22:17.499 --> 00:22:19.039
almost it almost seems so
00:22:19.160 --> 00:22:19.901
obvious it's not worth
00:22:19.921 --> 00:22:21.201
saying except except it's
00:22:21.261 --> 00:22:22.342
not treated as obvious
00:22:22.382 --> 00:22:24.103
right often folks trim
00:22:24.463 --> 00:22:26.325
history or science time and
00:22:26.365 --> 00:22:27.204
the bottom line is when you
00:22:27.224 --> 00:22:28.086
don't have that knowledge
00:22:28.125 --> 00:22:29.666
base you actually can't
00:22:30.326 --> 00:22:32.288
do the kinds of literacy
00:22:32.308 --> 00:22:33.349
things that you want to do
00:22:33.410 --> 00:22:34.651
if you can't just teach
00:22:34.691 --> 00:22:36.011
critical thinking in the
00:22:36.051 --> 00:22:38.054
wild I if I could just
00:22:38.114 --> 00:22:39.154
write you a lesson on main
00:22:39.234 --> 00:22:40.675
idea and say listen
00:22:40.695 --> 00:22:41.836
eleventh graders like no
00:22:41.876 --> 00:22:42.678
one's ever told you about
00:22:42.718 --> 00:22:44.118
main idea but let me reveal
00:22:44.358 --> 00:22:45.500
this is what main idea is
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:46.381
and we'll practice it ten
00:22:46.421 --> 00:22:47.221
times and then you will
00:22:47.241 --> 00:22:48.623
know it we would we would
00:22:48.663 --> 00:22:50.203
be doing this podcast from
00:22:50.263 --> 00:22:52.046
the beach I would I would
00:22:52.165 --> 00:22:53.967
have you know suntan lotion
00:22:54.067 --> 00:22:55.008
on and be relaxing and have
00:22:55.028 --> 00:22:56.229
a lot more hair than I do
00:22:56.690 --> 00:22:57.569
it's just not the way
00:22:58.351 --> 00:23:00.532
like reading works, it's not, you know,
00:23:00.653 --> 00:23:03.255
and I think, you know, as a country,
00:23:03.295 --> 00:23:04.695
because we have
00:23:05.891 --> 00:23:06.730
because people
00:23:07.431 --> 00:23:08.932
understandably invest in
00:23:09.011 --> 00:23:09.852
just like assessments that
00:23:09.872 --> 00:23:11.352
tell us how are our kids doing,
00:23:12.152 --> 00:23:13.353
they made an assumption,
00:23:13.573 --> 00:23:14.452
I think all of us made an
00:23:14.472 --> 00:23:16.452
assumption that like was questionable,
00:23:16.472 --> 00:23:17.634
which is like, oh, like, well,
00:23:17.834 --> 00:23:18.433
you didn't do well on
00:23:18.473 --> 00:23:19.114
inferencing questions,
00:23:19.153 --> 00:23:20.074
I'll just teach inferencing.
00:23:20.673 --> 00:23:21.734
But I always say to folks, I'm like,
00:23:21.775 --> 00:23:23.234
listen, like, you know,
00:23:24.154 --> 00:23:25.935
my two-year-old can make it,
00:23:26.276 --> 00:23:28.016
like he knows when he like
00:23:28.056 --> 00:23:29.395
hits me with a wooden spoon
00:23:29.496 --> 00:23:30.355
and he sees the look on my
00:23:30.416 --> 00:23:31.957
face and he pauses, like something,
00:23:32.757 --> 00:23:33.837
something is not right, right?
00:23:33.877 --> 00:23:34.837
He can make the inference.
00:23:34.877 --> 00:23:35.637
The question when our kids
00:23:35.657 --> 00:23:36.878
struggle with inference is, okay, well,
00:23:36.919 --> 00:23:37.259
why?
00:23:37.499 --> 00:23:38.278
What about the text made
00:23:38.319 --> 00:23:39.720
them struggle in this case?
00:23:39.740 --> 00:23:41.020
Was it knowledge that they didn't have?
00:23:41.101 --> 00:23:42.240
Is the text complex in a way
00:23:42.260 --> 00:23:44.182
that they didn't anticipate
00:23:44.201 --> 00:23:45.663
or they haven't had experience with?
00:23:46.063 --> 00:23:47.222
That's usually when
00:23:47.644 --> 00:23:48.523
understanding breaks down.
00:23:48.584 --> 00:23:50.904
So to your broader question, like, yes,
00:23:50.984 --> 00:23:52.205
this is, it's one of my,
00:23:52.226 --> 00:23:52.786
one of the things I'm
00:23:52.806 --> 00:23:53.566
currently thinking about
00:23:53.605 --> 00:23:55.047
even more is how do we
00:23:55.794 --> 00:23:58.635
build programs that mutually reinforce,
00:23:58.695 --> 00:24:00.238
not just vertically, not just, you know,
00:24:00.317 --> 00:24:01.818
I love thinking about five, twelve ELA,
00:24:01.838 --> 00:24:02.799
that was my first thing.
00:24:03.180 --> 00:24:05.662
And now I'm thinking more about, okay,
00:24:06.222 --> 00:24:07.243
if I, you know,
00:24:07.463 --> 00:24:09.265
if I'm working with our history director,
00:24:10.305 --> 00:24:11.565
Do we need to have different
00:24:11.605 --> 00:24:12.526
ways of talking about
00:24:12.566 --> 00:24:13.665
writing and history in English?
00:24:14.926 --> 00:24:15.946
I don't know.
00:24:16.987 --> 00:24:19.228
As someone who began his
00:24:19.248 --> 00:24:21.229
career as a writer, it feels like, well,
00:24:21.409 --> 00:24:22.169
I think we could probably
00:24:22.189 --> 00:24:23.229
make this a lot simpler for
00:24:23.269 --> 00:24:25.789
our students and for ourselves.
00:24:26.730 --> 00:24:27.730
I think a lot of times the
00:24:27.770 --> 00:24:29.270
experience in secondary is
00:24:29.310 --> 00:24:30.912
you're changing channels all the time.
00:24:31.912 --> 00:24:33.573
both year to year and class to class.
00:24:33.993 --> 00:24:36.055
And so one teacher likes the
00:24:36.075 --> 00:24:37.355
serial comma and the other
00:24:37.395 --> 00:24:38.155
teacher does not.
00:24:38.455 --> 00:24:39.356
And you're trying just to
00:24:39.936 --> 00:24:41.278
navigate all those nuances.
00:24:41.317 --> 00:24:41.817
And I'm like,
00:24:41.857 --> 00:24:43.259
I just feel like there is
00:24:43.358 --> 00:24:45.881
huge opportunity for us to
00:24:46.221 --> 00:24:47.060
sing the same song.
00:24:47.662 --> 00:24:48.721
And a lot of the movements,
00:24:49.462 --> 00:24:50.323
whether you want to talk
00:24:50.363 --> 00:24:52.384
about disciplinary literacy
00:24:52.904 --> 00:24:53.625
or you talk about things
00:24:53.644 --> 00:24:54.665
like the writing revolution,
00:24:54.685 --> 00:24:55.886
which is cross content,
00:24:57.007 --> 00:24:57.807
All of those things I think
00:24:57.867 --> 00:24:59.248
are in service of us.
00:24:59.949 --> 00:25:00.729
Just trying to make things
00:25:00.749 --> 00:25:01.930
simpler for our kids and
00:25:01.950 --> 00:25:02.970
ourselves so that we can
00:25:03.089 --> 00:25:04.270
really all be partners and
00:25:04.290 --> 00:25:05.231
are not siloed in our
00:25:05.251 --> 00:25:06.731
classrooms just saying, well,
00:25:06.751 --> 00:25:07.873
I don't know what's going on next door.
00:25:07.913 --> 00:25:10.253
We're doing Oxford comma in
00:25:10.294 --> 00:25:11.154
my room and whatever
00:25:11.194 --> 00:25:12.255
happens next door happens.
00:25:12.335 --> 00:25:13.675
But let's talk and let's
00:25:13.695 --> 00:25:14.576
make a plan together.
00:25:15.817 --> 00:25:17.719
Let's try to, you know, the metaphor,
00:25:17.919 --> 00:25:19.721
and then I will pause, go up for air.
00:25:21.162 --> 00:25:22.502
I had a principal once who said,
00:25:23.063 --> 00:25:24.884
a light bulb shines many
00:25:24.904 --> 00:25:26.246
different wavelengths in all directions,
00:25:26.286 --> 00:25:26.385
right?
00:25:26.405 --> 00:25:27.146
It can light up a room.
00:25:27.166 --> 00:25:28.208
He's like,
00:25:28.228 --> 00:25:29.788
but a laser is when you take all
00:25:29.828 --> 00:25:31.391
that light, you focus it in one spot,
00:25:31.451 --> 00:25:32.811
and you put it in the same wavelength,
00:25:33.051 --> 00:25:33.813
and that can cut steel.
00:25:34.614 --> 00:25:35.855
And I think we have some
00:25:35.894 --> 00:25:37.256
opportunity to think of our
00:25:37.296 --> 00:25:38.957
work in a more laser-like
00:25:38.977 --> 00:25:40.057
fashion than we probably have.
00:25:40.076 --> 00:25:40.778
I think we've done a lot of
00:25:40.817 --> 00:25:41.317
light bulb work.
00:25:41.337 --> 00:25:42.198
There's nothing wrong with it.
00:25:42.979 --> 00:25:43.419
But I think there's
00:25:43.459 --> 00:25:44.619
opportunity for us to kind
00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:45.920
of refine our thinking a little bit,
00:25:45.960 --> 00:25:47.020
at least where we see the
00:25:47.040 --> 00:25:52.763
opportunities as colleagues.
00:25:53.344 --> 00:25:54.325
I almost feel like
00:25:55.765 --> 00:25:56.684
if there can be more
00:25:56.805 --> 00:26:00.105
opportunity for districts and schools,
00:26:00.506 --> 00:26:01.165
and right now I'm really
00:26:01.205 --> 00:26:03.446
just talking about the United States,
00:26:04.106 --> 00:26:08.508
for co-teaching opportunities.
00:26:09.248 --> 00:26:10.068
So, like,
00:26:10.949 --> 00:26:12.249
because you kind of made the comment,
00:26:12.409 --> 00:26:14.069
and this comment resonates with me,
00:26:14.109 --> 00:26:16.029
just seeing, being really, you know,
00:26:16.069 --> 00:26:17.589
in the high school environment,
00:26:18.510 --> 00:26:19.830
where kids, like, they're,
00:26:19.871 --> 00:26:21.671
sometimes kids are taking five classes,
00:26:21.830 --> 00:26:23.652
six, if they need, like,
00:26:24.453 --> 00:26:26.174
credit recovery or if
00:26:26.234 --> 00:26:27.316
they're like oh I need to
00:26:27.355 --> 00:26:28.897
squeeze in this ap course
00:26:28.998 --> 00:26:29.798
right and then it's like
00:26:30.739 --> 00:26:32.240
again that that cognitive
00:26:32.540 --> 00:26:36.143
overload um but like
00:26:36.182 --> 00:26:36.824
something I appreciate
00:26:36.844 --> 00:26:38.045
about my daughter's school
00:26:38.065 --> 00:26:39.246
so like she's still in the
00:26:39.326 --> 00:26:40.527
elementary grades but when
00:26:40.567 --> 00:26:41.587
she gets into the junior
00:26:41.607 --> 00:26:43.269
high grades they collapse
00:26:43.328 --> 00:26:45.270
the subjects in a
00:26:45.330 --> 00:26:46.352
co-teaching environment
00:26:46.392 --> 00:26:47.471
where they they collapse
00:26:47.792 --> 00:26:50.335
ela and history together so
00:26:50.355 --> 00:26:52.355
it's like same lesson but hitting
00:26:53.342 --> 00:26:54.582
hitting different standards.
00:26:54.782 --> 00:26:55.083
Right.
00:26:55.423 --> 00:26:55.583
And,
00:26:55.843 --> 00:26:58.284
and the feedback I've gotten at the
00:26:58.344 --> 00:27:00.525
school is like, it's, it's not,
00:27:00.924 --> 00:27:03.445
it's not this extra burden of having kids,
00:27:03.486 --> 00:27:04.465
especially a junior high
00:27:04.546 --> 00:27:05.807
age where they're trying to
00:27:05.846 --> 00:27:07.287
go through all those classes.
00:27:09.587 --> 00:27:10.709
And it's easier to like
00:27:11.189 --> 00:27:12.669
align this stuff with literacy.
00:27:12.730 --> 00:27:14.569
I would imagine because like, cool,
00:27:14.589 --> 00:27:16.391
what does this look like in
00:27:16.431 --> 00:27:18.832
this one class with these two subjects?
00:27:18.892 --> 00:27:19.071
Just,
00:27:20.224 --> 00:27:22.726
Yeah, I've seen that model.
00:27:23.366 --> 00:27:24.307
I think there's two ways to do it, right?
00:27:24.467 --> 00:27:25.248
Well, there's more than two ways.
00:27:25.268 --> 00:27:25.867
So there's two ways that
00:27:25.887 --> 00:27:26.607
come to the top of mind, right?
00:27:26.667 --> 00:27:27.729
One is to have a model like that,
00:27:28.108 --> 00:27:28.588
where you say,
00:27:28.608 --> 00:27:29.849
we're going to have a humanities block,
00:27:30.109 --> 00:27:30.730
and we're going to have a
00:27:30.830 --> 00:27:32.351
program that works together.
00:27:32.832 --> 00:27:34.752
I think the other way you do it is...
00:27:35.393 --> 00:27:35.874
There's a book.
00:27:35.894 --> 00:27:36.575
Oh, gosh.
00:27:36.694 --> 00:27:37.655
I don't want to say how many
00:27:37.675 --> 00:27:38.156
years ago it came out.
00:27:38.176 --> 00:27:39.577
There's a book by Heidi
00:27:39.597 --> 00:27:40.819
Hayes Jacobs just called
00:27:40.859 --> 00:27:42.642
Mapping the Big Curriculum, I think.
00:27:42.682 --> 00:27:43.522
I think that was the name of it.
00:27:43.563 --> 00:27:44.523
I read it years ago.
00:27:45.184 --> 00:27:45.846
It's a short book,
00:27:46.125 --> 00:27:47.448
but basically made the case of like,
00:27:47.468 --> 00:27:47.667
you know,
00:27:47.867 --> 00:27:50.131
it like makes sense if I'm teaching, say,
00:27:50.171 --> 00:27:51.031
tenth grade English.
00:27:51.903 --> 00:27:53.565
or eighth gradings, whatever grade, right?
00:27:53.785 --> 00:27:54.345
It makes sense for me to
00:27:54.365 --> 00:27:55.365
know what's happening in history,
00:27:55.385 --> 00:27:56.326
what's happening in science,
00:27:56.406 --> 00:27:58.068
because I can then leverage,
00:27:58.209 --> 00:27:59.170
and vice versa,
00:27:59.250 --> 00:28:01.092
it makes sense for my peers to know.
00:28:01.672 --> 00:28:02.853
So that you have the option of,
00:28:02.873 --> 00:28:03.534
you might say, well,
00:28:03.574 --> 00:28:04.134
I'm teaching
00:28:05.276 --> 00:28:07.438
transcendentalism at this particular time,
00:28:07.458 --> 00:28:08.778
because this is when in history class,
00:28:08.818 --> 00:28:10.560
we are at this moment and it makes sense.
00:28:11.481 --> 00:28:13.324
And I think there's power in that.
00:28:13.825 --> 00:28:15.346
But I also think that it's
00:28:15.406 --> 00:28:17.088
also okay if you say, that's okay.
00:28:17.328 --> 00:28:18.410
I know that history hasn't
00:28:18.430 --> 00:28:19.171
gotten to this yet.
00:28:19.250 --> 00:28:20.152
So when I teach it,
00:28:20.492 --> 00:28:21.233
I'm going to make sure I
00:28:21.253 --> 00:28:21.974
teach it with the knowledge
00:28:21.994 --> 00:28:23.797
that kids like do not know
00:28:24.478 --> 00:28:25.199
as much about the
00:28:25.378 --> 00:28:26.319
mid-eighteen hundreds in
00:28:26.339 --> 00:28:28.061
the US as like they will in a year.
00:28:28.883 --> 00:28:29.823
And then I'm also going to
00:28:29.843 --> 00:28:30.923
make sure that I read my
00:28:30.963 --> 00:28:33.424
history counterpart in so that that way,
00:28:33.484 --> 00:28:35.026
when they get to that, they can say, hey,
00:28:35.046 --> 00:28:36.086
wait a minute, you guys,
00:28:36.506 --> 00:28:37.606
you guys read about this.
00:28:38.807 --> 00:28:40.327
So I'm going to I'm going to
00:28:40.367 --> 00:28:41.188
leverage what you learned
00:28:41.208 --> 00:28:42.008
when you did that unit.
00:28:42.028 --> 00:28:42.769
And I think that that's
00:28:43.729 --> 00:28:45.410
another powerful way that
00:28:45.549 --> 00:28:46.730
you can do it multiple ways.
00:28:46.769 --> 00:28:47.631
And there's benefits and
00:28:47.671 --> 00:28:48.550
detriments to both.
00:28:48.671 --> 00:28:51.491
I'm not here to like say one
00:28:51.551 --> 00:28:52.992
works and the other doesn't.
00:28:53.032 --> 00:28:54.633
Right now we have the
00:28:54.653 --> 00:28:55.773
schools I work with have
00:28:56.695 --> 00:28:58.355
different history and ELA classes,
00:28:58.395 --> 00:28:59.196
but we do a lot of
00:29:00.076 --> 00:29:00.636
collaborating and we're
00:29:00.656 --> 00:29:01.557
looking to do more.
00:29:02.397 --> 00:29:03.337
But I also know schools that
00:29:03.377 --> 00:29:04.798
have built a humanities
00:29:04.837 --> 00:29:06.077
block that really like it.
00:29:06.117 --> 00:29:08.499
So it's kind of intriguing to see, OK,
00:29:08.578 --> 00:29:10.640
like, you know, what is that?
00:29:10.680 --> 00:29:11.500
What is the benefit?
00:29:11.900 --> 00:29:12.799
You know, again,
00:29:12.819 --> 00:29:13.819
it comes from just like
00:29:13.840 --> 00:29:14.641
we're trying to do this book,
00:29:14.681 --> 00:29:15.601
like you go to observe
00:29:15.621 --> 00:29:16.601
folks doing it and you see
00:29:16.621 --> 00:29:18.201
how people feel and you see what works.
00:29:19.682 --> 00:29:21.103
And with education, as I always feel,
00:29:21.123 --> 00:29:21.383
I'm like,
00:29:21.462 --> 00:29:22.384
usually I feel there's a lot of
00:29:22.403 --> 00:29:23.605
different ways to get at, like,
00:29:23.625 --> 00:29:24.685
a couple of key principles.
00:29:24.726 --> 00:29:25.866
And they're the ones that you named,
00:29:25.926 --> 00:29:26.146
right?
00:29:26.446 --> 00:29:27.928
Not making it super complex
00:29:28.209 --> 00:29:29.229
for teachers and kids.
00:29:29.829 --> 00:29:30.911
Not having the left hand
00:29:30.931 --> 00:29:31.830
doesn't know what the right
00:29:31.871 --> 00:29:32.791
hand is doing.
00:29:33.231 --> 00:29:34.973
Or the left hand says, you know,
00:29:35.074 --> 00:29:36.835
we count one, two, three, four, five.
00:29:36.855 --> 00:29:37.675
And the right hand says, actually,
00:29:37.695 --> 00:29:38.757
we count backwards, five, four, three,
00:29:38.777 --> 00:29:39.136
two, one.
00:29:39.656 --> 00:29:40.317
And, you know,
00:29:40.357 --> 00:29:41.778
it's the same as if you think about,
00:29:41.838 --> 00:29:42.078
like...
00:29:43.200 --> 00:29:44.340
just like how schools build
00:29:44.361 --> 00:29:45.060
their own systems.
00:29:45.080 --> 00:29:47.142
Like one of the things that
00:29:47.182 --> 00:29:48.242
the place I work thinks a
00:29:48.282 --> 00:29:48.843
lot about is like,
00:29:48.883 --> 00:29:49.682
what are the systems that
00:29:49.742 --> 00:29:51.483
best serve kids that are replicable?
00:29:51.903 --> 00:29:54.005
So we might say, great,
00:29:54.025 --> 00:29:55.306
this is a great homework system.
00:29:55.346 --> 00:29:56.365
Like some teachers designed it.
00:29:56.385 --> 00:29:57.386
We're going to share it with everyone.
00:29:57.426 --> 00:29:58.307
We're going to try to align
00:29:58.326 --> 00:29:59.087
as best we can.
00:29:59.448 --> 00:30:01.028
So it's easy so that we all, you know,
00:30:01.128 --> 00:30:01.449
easy.
00:30:01.588 --> 00:30:02.528
It was a kids used to come
00:30:02.588 --> 00:30:04.089
in and is in the high school.
00:30:04.130 --> 00:30:05.030
There would be folders out
00:30:05.050 --> 00:30:05.651
in the morning and they
00:30:05.671 --> 00:30:06.872
would put their homework in the folder.
00:30:07.291 --> 00:30:08.251
So as an English teacher,
00:30:08.952 --> 00:30:09.893
not only did I already know
00:30:09.932 --> 00:30:10.492
from the start of the day
00:30:10.512 --> 00:30:11.473
who did their homework and who didn't,
00:30:12.334 --> 00:30:13.295
But I could also page
00:30:13.335 --> 00:30:15.536
through it in the morning and just see,
00:30:15.596 --> 00:30:17.438
okay, like, you know,
00:30:17.478 --> 00:30:18.939
how are my kids coming into class today?
00:30:19.298 --> 00:30:20.319
Do we like totally
00:30:20.339 --> 00:30:21.140
understand this chapter we
00:30:21.160 --> 00:30:21.700
read for homework?
00:30:21.740 --> 00:30:22.320
Did we not?
00:30:22.381 --> 00:30:23.201
Do we have questions?
00:30:23.521 --> 00:30:24.221
I could like flip through
00:30:24.241 --> 00:30:25.942
really quickly and kind of
00:30:26.002 --> 00:30:27.003
know sort of what kind of
00:30:27.044 --> 00:30:27.904
class I was going to have.
00:30:27.924 --> 00:30:28.625
And that would allow me to
00:30:28.664 --> 00:30:30.326
make smarter decisions as
00:30:30.385 --> 00:30:30.865
class was going.
00:30:30.885 --> 00:30:31.727
So another big idea in love
00:30:31.747 --> 00:30:32.528
and literacy is like,
00:30:32.567 --> 00:30:33.468
we just want to make
00:30:34.068 --> 00:30:35.169
thinking as visible as we
00:30:35.209 --> 00:30:37.131
can so we can do something about it.
00:30:37.270 --> 00:30:38.030
We can act on it.
00:30:39.511 --> 00:30:41.232
down all the way from from
00:30:41.272 --> 00:30:42.673
writing before discussion
00:30:43.273 --> 00:30:45.296
to uh the way that we coach
00:30:45.316 --> 00:30:46.556
students to annotate so we
00:30:46.576 --> 00:30:48.037
can see sort of what
00:30:48.057 --> 00:30:48.938
they're thinking as they
00:30:48.998 --> 00:30:50.499
read which is you know one
00:30:50.519 --> 00:30:51.338
of the hardest puzzles to
00:30:51.378 --> 00:30:52.900
crack for a teacher is like
00:30:53.039 --> 00:30:55.402
huh why did you why did you
00:30:55.442 --> 00:30:56.541
think the great gatsby was
00:30:56.582 --> 00:30:58.182
a magician like that's like
00:30:58.202 --> 00:30:58.963
what led you know like
00:30:59.003 --> 00:31:00.585
whatever the the the
00:31:00.605 --> 00:31:01.665
takeaway right we all have
00:31:01.726 --> 00:31:03.626
different um we all have
00:31:03.666 --> 00:31:05.087
different things right so we try to
00:31:05.955 --> 00:31:06.576
We try to make that as
00:31:06.596 --> 00:31:07.758
visible as we can because
00:31:07.778 --> 00:31:09.881
you can't address things
00:31:10.040 --> 00:31:10.741
that you don't see.
00:31:10.821 --> 00:31:12.143
You can't correct what you don't detect.
00:31:13.204 --> 00:31:15.406
So part of the book is like,
00:31:15.487 --> 00:31:16.087
here's some of the ways
00:31:16.107 --> 00:31:17.128
that we've tried to help
00:31:17.209 --> 00:31:18.109
make student thinking as
00:31:18.170 --> 00:31:19.372
visible to us as we can.
00:31:19.892 --> 00:31:20.874
So we can make those smart
00:31:20.933 --> 00:31:22.075
in the moment decisions or
00:31:22.154 --> 00:31:23.576
even between class decisions
00:31:23.797 --> 00:31:26.019
uh for how we're going to to
00:31:26.058 --> 00:31:26.719
build a curriculum that's
00:31:26.759 --> 00:31:27.799
truly responsive to our
00:31:27.819 --> 00:31:29.000
kids that's not just like
00:31:29.020 --> 00:31:29.842
saying that we wrote down
00:31:29.882 --> 00:31:31.103
and like shoved you know
00:31:31.143 --> 00:31:31.844
down the throats of our
00:31:31.864 --> 00:31:32.923
kids we say great we want a
00:31:32.943 --> 00:31:34.925
curriculum that is is both
00:31:34.945 --> 00:31:35.666
speaking to you and
00:31:35.686 --> 00:31:36.928
listening to you and meets
00:31:36.948 --> 00:31:37.768
you where you are and takes
00:31:37.788 --> 00:31:38.469
you where you need to go
00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:42.181
You said a lot that I love,
00:31:42.260 --> 00:31:44.981
and I'm just trying to process it all.
00:31:45.061 --> 00:31:45.521
I said a lot.
00:31:45.541 --> 00:31:45.842
I said a lot.
00:31:45.862 --> 00:31:46.362
So I'm sorry.
00:31:46.402 --> 00:31:47.863
Get me wound up, and then I just start,
00:31:47.903 --> 00:31:48.163
you know.
00:31:48.182 --> 00:31:50.223
Well, I'm the same way.
00:31:50.284 --> 00:31:52.325
Sometimes I look at Steve, and he's like,
00:31:52.365 --> 00:31:55.726
stop talking, Sophie.
00:31:55.746 --> 00:31:57.126
Actually, all the time I look at Steve,
00:31:57.207 --> 00:31:58.446
and he's like, stop talking, Sophie.
00:31:58.767 --> 00:32:01.949
But I want to go back to the
00:32:02.028 --> 00:32:03.388
collaboration piece where, like,
00:32:03.469 --> 00:32:04.349
you could either be
00:32:05.289 --> 00:32:06.609
teaching separate classes
00:32:06.971 --> 00:32:08.230
and knowing what you're doing,
00:32:08.270 --> 00:32:11.022
but I would even be –
00:32:08.990 --> 00:32:12.623
because I was one of those –
00:32:10.676 --> 00:32:11.657
cross-curricular
00:32:11.698 --> 00:32:14.361
collaboration people I can
00:32:15.382 --> 00:32:17.203
see give be given a group
00:32:17.243 --> 00:32:19.105
of standards or and like
00:32:19.145 --> 00:32:19.967
figure out how they could
00:32:19.987 --> 00:32:21.347
align so that you could
00:32:21.528 --> 00:32:24.030
actually bring in those
00:32:24.070 --> 00:32:25.972
cross-curricular aspects
00:32:26.073 --> 00:32:27.594
into your classroom in my
00:32:27.693 --> 00:32:29.797
math classroom we did two
00:32:29.836 --> 00:32:33.019
voice poems with math vocabulary
00:32:33.992 --> 00:32:34.973
And the kids loved it.
00:32:35.055 --> 00:32:36.036
And they walked away
00:32:36.155 --> 00:32:37.156
understanding those words
00:32:37.196 --> 00:32:38.239
better than any other class
00:32:38.358 --> 00:32:39.721
that I had or grade level.
00:32:40.481 --> 00:32:41.042
Everybody did it.
00:32:41.063 --> 00:32:43.005
But they wrote it in their
00:32:43.326 --> 00:32:45.328
English class and in my math class.
00:32:45.388 --> 00:32:46.569
We presented it at the same
00:32:46.609 --> 00:32:49.114
time because she and I had,
00:32:49.134 --> 00:32:50.715
we literally had all the same kids.
00:32:51.251 --> 00:32:53.354
So she brought her class
00:32:53.394 --> 00:32:54.214
over to my class and then
00:32:54.255 --> 00:32:56.336
we presented and it was
00:32:56.436 --> 00:32:57.217
absolutely amazing.
00:32:57.257 --> 00:32:58.458
And there are more things
00:32:58.478 --> 00:32:59.439
like that where we were
00:32:59.479 --> 00:33:00.480
doing something that was
00:33:00.519 --> 00:33:02.942
based around a history of social studies.
00:33:03.022 --> 00:33:04.344
It was West Virginia history
00:33:04.364 --> 00:33:05.203
because I'm in West Virginia.
00:33:05.223 --> 00:33:05.825
It was eighth grade.
00:33:06.211 --> 00:33:08.714
So we just developed things
00:33:08.734 --> 00:33:11.156
that you would measure with
00:33:11.678 --> 00:33:13.058
eighth grade math standards
00:33:13.819 --> 00:33:14.881
in West Virginia history.
00:33:14.941 --> 00:33:16.623
Like where would that actually fit in?
00:33:17.223 --> 00:33:18.904
And it was phenomenal.
00:33:19.066 --> 00:33:19.967
And that whole like
00:33:20.007 --> 00:33:22.068
transference of where
00:33:22.108 --> 00:33:24.191
things fit into the world
00:33:24.250 --> 00:33:25.352
and the kids understand it
00:33:25.372 --> 00:33:26.773
better because it's not just...
00:33:27.193 --> 00:33:28.234
I'm only going to use the
00:33:28.255 --> 00:33:29.616
Pythagorean theorem in math
00:33:29.656 --> 00:33:30.738
class and never else.
00:33:31.019 --> 00:33:32.099
But when you actually bring
00:33:32.140 --> 00:33:34.742
in that real world aspect of it,
00:33:34.942 --> 00:33:36.124
the application of it,
00:33:36.203 --> 00:33:37.865
where else am I going to be seeing this?
00:33:37.905 --> 00:33:39.807
Where else am I also talking about this?
00:33:40.628 --> 00:33:43.491
It is bringing back, you said it earlier,
00:33:43.511 --> 00:33:44.173
the retrieval.
00:33:44.333 --> 00:33:44.773
The retrieval.
00:33:45.654 --> 00:33:48.096
You're retrieving the
00:33:48.136 --> 00:33:49.718
memories and making
00:33:49.758 --> 00:33:51.159
connections that are going
00:33:51.199 --> 00:33:53.059
to leave a lasting impression.
00:33:54.141 --> 00:33:55.240
So it's not just be like
00:33:55.321 --> 00:33:57.262
knowing when to like teach
00:33:57.303 --> 00:33:58.443
at the same time or maybe
00:33:58.463 --> 00:33:59.324
just know about that,
00:33:59.344 --> 00:34:00.944
but you can do so much more
00:34:01.346 --> 00:34:01.925
with a little bit of
00:34:01.945 --> 00:34:03.386
creativity and questioning.
00:34:03.959 --> 00:34:06.339
and talking to your peers
00:34:06.359 --> 00:34:09.581
who are experts in other subjects.
00:34:09.802 --> 00:34:11.822
I'm just, sorry.
00:34:12.003 --> 00:34:12.103
No,
00:34:12.264 --> 00:34:13.965
I think what you're saying is so
00:34:13.985 --> 00:34:15.766
important for so many reasons, right?
00:34:15.806 --> 00:34:16.865
We know that like kids
00:34:16.925 --> 00:34:17.746
remember things when they
00:34:17.766 --> 00:34:18.806
connect it to their schema,
00:34:18.987 --> 00:34:19.967
not to get super nerdy.
00:34:20.947 --> 00:34:23.090
So if you're listening to
00:34:23.130 --> 00:34:24.911
this podcast and it's late in the evening,
00:34:24.951 --> 00:34:26.592
like, you know, just, I won't go,
00:34:26.652 --> 00:34:27.831
I won't go, I won't put you to sleep,
00:34:27.851 --> 00:34:28.452
but like kids,
00:34:29.335 --> 00:34:30.795
Like when we connect the
00:34:30.817 --> 00:34:31.456
things that we're learning
00:34:31.476 --> 00:34:32.797
to things that we already know,
00:34:33.139 --> 00:34:34.940
we remember them better.
00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:37.302
When we see the relevance of
00:34:37.342 --> 00:34:39.425
things to our own sense of self,
00:34:39.664 --> 00:34:41.106
we remember them better.
00:34:41.646 --> 00:34:42.347
And it doesn't have to,
00:34:42.407 --> 00:34:43.789
it could be sense of self in many ways.
00:34:43.809 --> 00:34:44.530
Like it could be sense of
00:34:44.570 --> 00:34:45.451
self as an intellectual.
00:34:46.771 --> 00:34:50.394
But I think one of the roles
00:34:50.434 --> 00:34:52.697
of teachers is to make that
00:34:53.036 --> 00:34:54.217
explicit for kids,
00:34:54.318 --> 00:34:55.478
to not assume that they
00:34:56.119 --> 00:34:57.181
will automatically see the
00:34:57.201 --> 00:34:58.681
same wonder in the world that we do.
00:34:58.762 --> 00:35:00.643
We have all self-selected to
00:35:00.704 --> 00:35:02.445
be surrounded by like learning all day.
00:35:02.744 --> 00:35:03.806
We are a special kind of
00:35:03.826 --> 00:35:05.927
nerd and my favorite kind of nerd,
00:35:05.967 --> 00:35:08.429
but like we've chosen that, right?
00:35:09.490 --> 00:35:10.311
That means that like things
00:35:10.331 --> 00:35:11.632
that might feel obvious to us, like, oh,
00:35:11.652 --> 00:35:13.253
of course, it's interesting to read about,
00:35:13.353 --> 00:35:15.976
you know, you know, Henry David Thoreau,
00:35:16.016 --> 00:35:16.135
right?
00:35:16.155 --> 00:35:17.456
Of course, I want to read this text.
00:35:17.617 --> 00:35:18.757
That might not be the way
00:35:18.818 --> 00:35:20.298
that kids come in feeling,
00:35:20.338 --> 00:35:21.199
especially if they haven't
00:35:21.219 --> 00:35:22.641
felt success in the past.
00:35:23.380 --> 00:35:25.202
So I always feel like with with
00:35:25.802 --> 00:35:27.543
every bit of of teaching,
00:35:27.563 --> 00:35:28.304
there's a little bit of
00:35:28.364 --> 00:35:30.503
salespersonship and it can
00:35:30.543 --> 00:35:32.143
be in big ways with cross
00:35:32.164 --> 00:35:33.204
content collaborations.
00:35:33.744 --> 00:35:35.304
It can be we end every year
00:35:35.324 --> 00:35:36.284
with this thing called a
00:35:36.364 --> 00:35:37.525
final performance task at
00:35:37.545 --> 00:35:38.085
our middle schools,
00:35:38.126 --> 00:35:39.246
which is like all of the
00:35:39.286 --> 00:35:40.405
contents work together on a
00:35:40.505 --> 00:35:41.786
big presentation and each
00:35:41.826 --> 00:35:43.527
content contributes a piece.
00:35:43.567 --> 00:35:45.166
And it's centered on the
00:35:45.186 --> 00:35:46.266
essential questions that
00:35:46.286 --> 00:35:47.507
the units have asked all year.
00:35:47.547 --> 00:35:49.288
So it could be like a big thing like that.
00:35:49.327 --> 00:35:51.168
It can be as simple as like
00:35:51.228 --> 00:35:52.228
when I'm launching
00:35:54.369 --> 00:35:55.869
this lesson on Emily Dickinson,
00:35:56.050 --> 00:35:57.050
I'm going to help you
00:35:57.110 --> 00:35:58.849
connect her to your own
00:35:58.889 --> 00:36:00.130
experience in your own life.
00:36:00.570 --> 00:36:02.731
There's an old quote by Ezra Pound.
00:36:02.751 --> 00:36:02.952
He said,
00:36:02.992 --> 00:36:04.952
literature is news that stays news.
00:36:06.632 --> 00:36:08.293
And that was back when,
00:36:08.572 --> 00:36:09.833
and I say this as a former journalist,
00:36:10.434 --> 00:36:11.474
it was more self-evident to
00:36:11.514 --> 00:36:12.213
people that you should be
00:36:12.253 --> 00:36:13.054
reading the news and that's
00:36:13.094 --> 00:36:14.014
all their conversation.
00:36:14.054 --> 00:36:16.315
But I think that what we can
00:36:16.375 --> 00:36:18.755
do is help our lessons feel
00:36:18.876 --> 00:36:20.295
relevant and powerful for
00:36:20.335 --> 00:36:22.376
kids and about them because they are.
00:36:22.637 --> 00:36:24.117
uh sometimes it's obvious
00:36:24.197 --> 00:36:25.478
but if it's not that
00:36:25.498 --> 00:36:26.139
doesn't mean the lesson's
00:36:26.179 --> 00:36:27.541
bad it means like our role
00:36:27.661 --> 00:36:28.922
is to like sell a little
00:36:28.961 --> 00:36:30.302
bit you guys may you may or
00:36:30.322 --> 00:36:31.302
may not be familiar in the
00:36:31.463 --> 00:36:33.284
english world there has
00:36:33.344 --> 00:36:35.947
been a spate of of articles
00:36:36.007 --> 00:36:37.208
recently kind of decrying
00:36:37.248 --> 00:36:39.128
the use of novels uh saying
00:36:39.148 --> 00:36:40.550
kids don't read novels
00:36:40.590 --> 00:36:42.010
anymore maybe we shouldn't
00:36:42.050 --> 00:36:43.692
teach them it's an outdated
00:36:43.731 --> 00:36:45.534
technology we live in the
00:36:45.574 --> 00:36:47.675
future I'm pro I'm pro
00:36:47.735 --> 00:36:48.596
novel instruction in
00:36:48.675 --> 00:36:49.556
english curriculum
00:36:49.597 --> 00:36:50.836
respectfully to anyone who
00:36:53.800 --> 00:36:56.503
But I do think that like teaching a novel,
00:36:57.264 --> 00:36:58.266
you know, having kids invest,
00:36:58.286 --> 00:36:59.987
which can feel like, oh, my God,
00:37:00.068 --> 00:37:01.789
six weeks were, you know,
00:37:02.150 --> 00:37:03.893
slogging through nineteen eighty four.
00:37:03.952 --> 00:37:04.873
And how am I going to do it?
00:37:04.934 --> 00:37:05.114
Right.
00:37:05.434 --> 00:37:05.974
Part of the.
00:37:06.675 --> 00:37:08.177
The power is, well,
00:37:08.257 --> 00:37:10.338
we have to think about ways
00:37:10.378 --> 00:37:11.340
to make those novels feel
00:37:11.380 --> 00:37:12.380
powerful for our kids,
00:37:12.400 --> 00:37:13.541
to help them invest so they
00:37:13.581 --> 00:37:14.443
can see the benefit.
00:37:14.483 --> 00:37:16.043
Most people who've read
00:37:16.063 --> 00:37:17.505
Nineteen Eighty-Four afterwards are like,
00:37:17.585 --> 00:37:18.525
I'm so glad I've read that.
00:37:18.545 --> 00:37:19.646
There's so many connections.
00:37:20.186 --> 00:37:21.608
But our kids haven't read it
00:37:21.648 --> 00:37:23.650
fifty times like an English teacher has.
00:37:24.110 --> 00:37:25.291
They've never read it.
00:37:25.711 --> 00:37:27.373
And so a lot of our job is
00:37:27.434 --> 00:37:28.195
helping make those
00:37:28.215 --> 00:37:29.976
connections as clear as we
00:37:30.016 --> 00:37:31.918
can to students' sense of self,
00:37:31.978 --> 00:37:32.900
to the things that they're learning,
00:37:32.960 --> 00:37:33.641
to their world.
00:37:33.820 --> 00:37:35.422
There's lots of different ways to do it.
00:37:35.802 --> 00:37:36.463
I feel like it doesn't get
00:37:36.483 --> 00:37:37.364
discussed enough, though.
00:37:37.425 --> 00:37:39.306
I feel like sometimes our hope is that
00:37:40.335 --> 00:37:41.197
kids will see the same
00:37:41.237 --> 00:37:42.398
beauty that we all see.
00:37:42.498 --> 00:37:44.000
And it's easy, I think, I don't,
00:37:44.360 --> 00:37:45.121
researchers talk something
00:37:45.141 --> 00:37:46.001
about the curse of knowledge,
00:37:46.021 --> 00:37:46.963
like things that feel
00:37:47.043 --> 00:37:49.166
obvious to us as adults are
00:37:49.206 --> 00:37:50.286
not always obvious, right?
00:37:50.626 --> 00:37:51.887
Like a child learning to read.
00:37:51.907 --> 00:37:52.429
I'm like, oh,
00:37:52.469 --> 00:37:53.250
you look at the word and you
00:37:53.269 --> 00:37:53.831
read the word.
00:37:53.851 --> 00:37:55.271
Like I can't see my brain
00:37:55.592 --> 00:37:56.793
breaking it down in the way
00:37:56.833 --> 00:37:58.735
that maybe it had to when I was learning.
00:37:59.695 --> 00:38:00.777
but people who are novice at
00:38:00.797 --> 00:38:01.976
things do not learn the
00:38:02.016 --> 00:38:02.878
same way as experts.
00:38:03.137 --> 00:38:04.579
I wish I could just put our
00:38:04.599 --> 00:38:05.539
students in a room with
00:38:05.579 --> 00:38:06.380
books and say like,
00:38:06.400 --> 00:38:09.561
discover the magic and let
00:38:09.581 --> 00:38:10.661
your heart guide you and you'll find it.
00:38:10.681 --> 00:38:11.802
But that's just not how,
00:38:12.442 --> 00:38:13.943
that's how it works in movies, right?
00:38:13.963 --> 00:38:14.663
You have a good training
00:38:14.702 --> 00:38:15.684
montage and suddenly
00:38:15.724 --> 00:38:18.065
everyone has aced whatever
00:38:18.405 --> 00:38:20.025
the assessment or won the big game.
00:38:20.065 --> 00:38:21.527
But in real life, I think we have to,
00:38:22.306 --> 00:38:23.626
We have to extend a hand to
00:38:23.666 --> 00:38:25.947
our kids to help them have
00:38:25.987 --> 00:38:27.007
those big aha moments for
00:38:27.027 --> 00:38:28.088
themselves so that then
00:38:28.108 --> 00:38:29.887
they become the people who grew up to say,
00:38:29.907 --> 00:38:31.329
well, of course, nineteen eighty four.
00:38:31.369 --> 00:38:31.829
Oh, my God,
00:38:31.849 --> 00:38:33.208
there's all these things happening.
00:38:33.548 --> 00:38:34.949
I'm so glad that that I can
00:38:35.088 --> 00:38:35.949
talk about this.
00:38:35.969 --> 00:38:37.650
And that's actually I think
00:38:37.690 --> 00:38:38.349
one of the more beautiful
00:38:38.369 --> 00:38:39.230
things we get to do as
00:38:39.250 --> 00:38:40.170
teachers is to build a
00:38:40.190 --> 00:38:42.391
bridge from the adulthood
00:38:42.411 --> 00:38:43.050
that we've made for
00:38:43.090 --> 00:38:44.971
ourselves to our students
00:38:44.990 --> 00:38:46.110
who are seeking one of
00:38:46.130 --> 00:38:46.851
their own creation.
00:38:47.532 --> 00:38:48.231
Yeah.
00:38:48.632 --> 00:38:49.612
And by the way,
00:38:50.902 --> 00:38:52.422
you have to read nineteen
00:38:52.443 --> 00:38:53.543
eighty four before you
00:38:53.563 --> 00:38:54.784
watch the movie I'm just
00:38:56.005 --> 00:38:59.027
making that super clear but
00:38:59.487 --> 00:39:01.789
I so steven like kind of
00:39:01.829 --> 00:39:03.210
like to piggyback what you
00:39:03.230 --> 00:39:05.351
just said about like to
00:39:05.431 --> 00:39:08.514
novel or to not novel right
00:39:10.315 --> 00:39:13.217
I would I would say that I
00:39:13.277 --> 00:39:14.898
feel that what what is the
00:39:14.958 --> 00:39:17.418
same with this generation of students
00:39:18.688 --> 00:39:19.690
compared to the past is like
00:39:19.731 --> 00:39:22.956
like is they still and we
00:39:23.016 --> 00:39:24.900
still enjoy good
00:39:24.960 --> 00:39:27.565
storytelling despite the
00:39:27.605 --> 00:39:30.389
medium right but it has to
00:39:30.409 --> 00:39:31.351
be the right story
00:39:32.478 --> 00:39:33.778
in the right time and place
00:39:34.199 --> 00:39:36.039
like in in life right and
00:39:36.139 --> 00:39:38.001
so I had the opportunity to
00:39:38.061 --> 00:39:39.221
teach in a california
00:39:39.300 --> 00:39:40.981
partnership academy which
00:39:41.161 --> 00:39:42.882
is part of the in my state
00:39:42.922 --> 00:39:46.364
part of cte um and you know
00:39:46.405 --> 00:39:47.505
the technical education
00:39:47.644 --> 00:39:50.567
side of public ed and we
00:39:50.606 --> 00:39:52.807
were cohorted so while they
00:39:52.827 --> 00:39:55.309
were reading I was tackling
00:39:55.349 --> 00:39:57.869
the civics component of of
00:39:57.929 --> 00:39:59.090
that book and we did the
00:39:59.210 --> 00:40:00.871
same in world history
00:40:02.065 --> 00:40:03.306
where the same grouping of students,
00:40:03.945 --> 00:40:05.748
while they were reading Animal Farm,
00:40:06.347 --> 00:40:08.309
I was teaching totalitarianism.
00:40:09.090 --> 00:40:11.552
And so I think they still
00:40:11.572 --> 00:40:13.994
appreciate good stories, but again,
00:40:14.014 --> 00:40:15.175
it has to be the right time
00:40:15.394 --> 00:40:17.597
and it has to be kind of
00:40:17.617 --> 00:40:18.297
like what you say,
00:40:18.336 --> 00:40:20.458
like what they already know, right?
00:40:20.559 --> 00:40:22.621
Like no matter what they're reading,
00:40:22.780 --> 00:40:24.601
there's some relevance there,
00:40:25.101 --> 00:40:27.284
but our job as educators is
00:40:27.304 --> 00:40:28.965
to help personalize that experience,
00:40:29.025 --> 00:40:29.286
right?
00:40:29.945 --> 00:40:30.226
Not a,
00:40:31.206 --> 00:40:32.487
you know this concept and
00:40:32.568 --> 00:40:33.690
sophie knows a lot about
00:40:33.730 --> 00:40:34.731
this topic but like this
00:40:34.931 --> 00:40:37.052
this gradual release right
00:40:37.554 --> 00:40:38.994
um don't just release the
00:40:39.034 --> 00:40:40.657
novel out into the wild
00:40:40.737 --> 00:40:41.697
they're gonna be like you
00:40:41.717 --> 00:40:43.760
know that doesn't work but
00:40:44.240 --> 00:40:46.103
uh providing those supports
00:40:46.143 --> 00:40:47.583
to make those connections
00:40:47.925 --> 00:40:49.847
um I don't know I'm very
00:40:49.967 --> 00:40:51.489
I'm very for novels in the
00:40:51.509 --> 00:40:52.610
classroom myself so
00:40:53.972 --> 00:40:54.452
Yeah, I mean,
00:40:54.472 --> 00:40:55.413
you want your books to be
00:40:55.454 --> 00:40:56.373
windows and mirrors.
00:40:56.414 --> 00:40:57.014
You want them to be
00:40:57.074 --> 00:40:58.153
opportunities for your kids
00:40:58.193 --> 00:40:59.255
to see themselves and to
00:40:59.275 --> 00:41:00.434
better understand others.
00:41:00.954 --> 00:41:03.376
And you also want them to be, you know,
00:41:03.456 --> 00:41:04.956
sufficiently complex so that, like,
00:41:04.976 --> 00:41:05.916
we know that, like,
00:41:05.936 --> 00:41:08.237
wherever you stand on the
00:41:08.277 --> 00:41:09.757
Common Core or whatever
00:41:10.038 --> 00:41:11.418
your state standards are, right,
00:41:11.438 --> 00:41:12.878
the big message of the last, like,
00:41:12.898 --> 00:41:13.820
decade was, like,
00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:14.300
kids were getting to
00:41:14.340 --> 00:41:14.860
college and they couldn't
00:41:14.880 --> 00:41:15.760
read the stuff in college
00:41:16.039 --> 00:41:16.601
because the stuff in
00:41:16.621 --> 00:41:17.300
college was harder than the
00:41:17.320 --> 00:41:18.460
stuff that they were reading with us.
00:41:18.860 --> 00:41:20.161
And it wasn't just, like, well,
00:41:20.242 --> 00:41:21.322
we'll talk to the twelfth grade teachers.
00:41:21.362 --> 00:41:21.641
It was, like,
00:41:21.742 --> 00:41:23.643
actually our entire K-tole program hadn't
00:41:24.083 --> 00:41:25.503
Hadn't prepared kids for that.
00:41:26.224 --> 00:41:27.043
Hadn't prepared because we
00:41:27.083 --> 00:41:28.164
hadn't thought enough about
00:41:28.204 --> 00:41:29.525
the knowledge we needed to build,
00:41:29.764 --> 00:41:31.085
about the complexity of the text.
00:41:31.166 --> 00:41:31.626
And not just,
00:41:31.826 --> 00:41:32.766
I don't just mean Lexi when I
00:41:32.786 --> 00:41:33.907
say complexity, but like,
00:41:34.246 --> 00:41:35.226
have you read books with
00:41:35.306 --> 00:41:36.246
unreliable narrators?
00:41:36.286 --> 00:41:37.367
Have you read an allegory
00:41:38.068 --> 00:41:39.969
like Animal Farm to force
00:41:39.989 --> 00:41:41.409
you to like think in those
00:41:41.429 --> 00:41:42.190
kinds of ways and make
00:41:42.210 --> 00:41:43.170
those kinds of connections?
00:41:43.860 --> 00:41:46.021
Um, so I do, I do think there's a lot of,
00:41:46.081 --> 00:41:47.141
you know, when we teach animal farm,
00:41:47.161 --> 00:41:47.701
we do,
00:41:48.101 --> 00:41:49.382
we follow it with a little mini
00:41:49.442 --> 00:41:51.101
unit on social media, uh,
00:41:51.121 --> 00:41:52.422
and social media literacy,
00:41:52.782 --> 00:41:53.623
because there's so many
00:41:53.663 --> 00:41:56.804
connections that kids can, can make both.
00:41:56.864 --> 00:41:58.204
It's like, you know, yes, there's a,
00:41:58.445 --> 00:41:58.744
there's a,
00:41:58.864 --> 00:42:00.005
there's their history connections.
00:42:00.025 --> 00:42:01.106
And we do that when we teach the book,
00:42:01.126 --> 00:42:02.106
like during the actual
00:42:02.525 --> 00:42:03.467
instruction of the book.
00:42:03.907 --> 00:42:04.706
And then we're like, but like,
00:42:04.726 --> 00:42:05.586
we don't want you to think
00:42:05.606 --> 00:42:06.947
that animal farm is just like,
00:42:07.407 --> 00:42:07.927
like something that
00:42:07.987 --> 00:42:09.648
happened and has no relevance to you.
00:42:09.668 --> 00:42:10.369
Um,
00:42:10.708 --> 00:42:11.550
So we talk about ways that
00:42:11.570 --> 00:42:12.510
we can bring it into like
00:42:12.690 --> 00:42:14.072
our kids' daily lives.
00:42:14.092 --> 00:42:15.733
And I think that, you know,
00:42:15.773 --> 00:42:16.894
whatever connections you make,
00:42:16.914 --> 00:42:18.496
there's lots of different ones like that.
00:42:19.097 --> 00:42:20.099
That's what makes things
00:42:20.119 --> 00:42:21.079
like sticky for us.
00:42:21.280 --> 00:42:21.440
Right.
00:42:21.460 --> 00:42:22.221
We feel like this is now
00:42:22.280 --> 00:42:23.641
part of who I am and part
00:42:23.681 --> 00:42:24.382
of my own journey.
00:42:25.704 --> 00:42:26.284
So I've heard.
00:42:26.864 --> 00:42:28.327
Yeah, I've heard pushback.
00:42:29.628 --> 00:42:30.409
from teachers who are like
00:42:30.949 --> 00:42:33.032
anti-novel of like it's
00:42:33.074 --> 00:42:33.855
almost like they have like
00:42:33.994 --> 00:42:35.737
archaic strategies when
00:42:35.777 --> 00:42:36.838
they think about what a
00:42:36.920 --> 00:42:37.840
novel would look like in
00:42:37.880 --> 00:42:39.623
their classroom like the
00:42:39.744 --> 00:42:41.407
round robin like I don't
00:42:41.427 --> 00:42:42.188
want to be there for like
00:42:42.208 --> 00:42:44.632
three weeks and round robbing
00:42:45.632 --> 00:42:46.813
it like is that a term I
00:42:46.853 --> 00:42:47.713
don't know but like they
00:42:47.753 --> 00:42:48.793
don't they don't they don't
00:42:48.813 --> 00:42:49.853
want to go through the I
00:42:49.893 --> 00:42:51.253
guess the work or maybe the
00:42:51.753 --> 00:42:53.494
you know how tedious it can
00:42:53.534 --> 00:42:56.215
be but Steven like I I know
00:42:56.275 --> 00:42:57.876
that you have a lot of
00:42:57.916 --> 00:42:59.076
great strategies probably
00:42:59.115 --> 00:43:01.317
in the book of like how do
00:43:01.336 --> 00:43:02.516
you make it more engaging
00:43:02.556 --> 00:43:05.018
more meaningful especially
00:43:05.057 --> 00:43:06.818
like in that you know in
00:43:06.838 --> 00:43:08.699
that high school junior high environment
00:43:09.445 --> 00:43:10.407
Sure, yeah.
00:43:10.467 --> 00:43:11.907
Robin's a great example of
00:43:11.927 --> 00:43:12.748
like a practice I wouldn't
00:43:12.789 --> 00:43:15.592
recommend because ultimately, one,
00:43:15.652 --> 00:43:16.773
it's just it's just it's
00:43:16.833 --> 00:43:18.333
not enjoyable for kids.
00:43:18.353 --> 00:43:19.394
You just wait for your turn
00:43:19.936 --> 00:43:20.936
and you're like, OK,
00:43:21.056 --> 00:43:22.217
I read like three people
00:43:22.237 --> 00:43:23.418
from now I have to read and
00:43:23.438 --> 00:43:24.159
then I can check out.
00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:26.121
If someone's not a fluent reader,
00:43:26.201 --> 00:43:27.061
they don't feel great about
00:43:27.101 --> 00:43:27.922
reading in front of the class,
00:43:27.942 --> 00:43:29.063
and actually, I think,
00:43:30.143 --> 00:43:31.684
is extra strain for students who are,
00:43:31.704 --> 00:43:32.864
so it doesn't help their peers.
00:43:32.885 --> 00:43:33.865
There's all kinds of reasons
00:43:34.507 --> 00:43:36.047
to put some of those practices aside that,
00:43:36.088 --> 00:43:39.009
frankly, that was my education.
00:43:39.048 --> 00:43:39.690
Some of the things,
00:43:40.309 --> 00:43:42.391
one of my biggest aha moments, I think,
00:43:42.431 --> 00:43:44.992
as a teacher and now as a
00:43:45.012 --> 00:43:46.634
teacher coach is the way
00:43:46.653 --> 00:43:47.454
that we were taught doesn't
00:43:47.494 --> 00:43:49.396
have to be the way that we teach others.
00:43:50.797 --> 00:43:52.637
You know, it feels sometimes comfortable,
00:43:52.677 --> 00:43:52.777
right?
00:43:52.797 --> 00:43:53.418
Because you're used to it.
00:43:53.438 --> 00:43:53.778
You're like, well,
00:43:53.798 --> 00:43:54.559
this is what teaching is.
00:43:54.579 --> 00:43:55.679
This is what it was when I was a kid.
00:43:56.500 --> 00:43:57.740
But it's okay to say, well, wait,
00:43:58.141 --> 00:43:59.262
is there a research base
00:43:59.762 --> 00:44:01.282
that supports doing this?
00:44:02.503 --> 00:44:05.364
You know, for me, this is, you know,
00:44:06.045 --> 00:44:07.666
I love classroom discourse.
00:44:07.746 --> 00:44:09.027
It is the place where in my
00:44:09.086 --> 00:44:09.726
own instruction,
00:44:09.907 --> 00:44:12.047
I felt most alive as an English teacher.
00:44:12.509 --> 00:44:13.108
And it was actually the
00:44:13.128 --> 00:44:14.349
place that I talked the least.
00:44:15.429 --> 00:44:17.851
That is not, by the way, a knock on, say,
00:44:18.273 --> 00:44:19.293
a direct instructional model.
00:44:19.333 --> 00:44:20.434
We know there are decades
00:44:20.474 --> 00:44:22.496
like the most research tested,
00:44:23.197 --> 00:44:25.559
proven way of instructing kids.
00:44:25.639 --> 00:44:26.760
If you're a math teacher,
00:44:26.780 --> 00:44:28.322
I'm sure Sophie could could
00:44:29.003 --> 00:44:30.605
school us both on the power
00:44:30.945 --> 00:44:32.987
of direct instructional models.
00:44:33.907 --> 00:44:35.028
But in English class, right,
00:44:35.068 --> 00:44:36.851
you're in a weird you're in a weird spot.
00:44:37.652 --> 00:44:38.452
English is is.
00:44:39.373 --> 00:44:41.356
You're not quite a novice at everything.
00:44:41.376 --> 00:44:42.797
Kids have read before.
00:44:42.818 --> 00:44:43.998
They've talked about books before.
00:44:44.018 --> 00:44:44.820
If they're a ninth grader,
00:44:44.840 --> 00:44:45.641
it's not their first book.
00:44:46.882 --> 00:44:49.306
But they also need a little bit of a push.
00:44:49.485 --> 00:44:50.467
And I think classroom
00:44:50.487 --> 00:44:51.307
discourse is a great place.
00:44:51.327 --> 00:44:52.849
We talk about ways to
00:44:52.889 --> 00:44:53.911
structure your discourse so
00:44:53.931 --> 00:44:54.972
that every kid speaks.
00:44:54.992 --> 00:44:55.974
So what we'll say is,
00:44:56.414 --> 00:44:58.115
to give you a very quick example,
00:44:58.891 --> 00:44:59.911
Kids write,
00:44:59.952 --> 00:45:01.132
we give them a broad question
00:45:01.413 --> 00:45:02.213
that's open-ended.
00:45:03.934 --> 00:45:05.195
We let them write, you know,
00:45:05.215 --> 00:45:05.996
it could be bullet points.
00:45:06.036 --> 00:45:06.737
It doesn't have to be a full
00:45:06.757 --> 00:45:07.597
paragraph or anything where
00:45:07.617 --> 00:45:08.739
they brainstorm their ideas.
00:45:08.938 --> 00:45:09.679
While they're brainstorming,
00:45:09.699 --> 00:45:10.619
I'm walking around the room
00:45:10.639 --> 00:45:11.420
seeing what they're thinking.
00:45:11.481 --> 00:45:12.141
So again,
00:45:12.342 --> 00:45:13.523
I know what my conversation is
00:45:13.543 --> 00:45:14.563
going to sound a little bit like,
00:45:14.623 --> 00:45:15.244
and I also know
00:45:15.766 --> 00:45:16.527
sophie has an interesting
00:45:16.586 --> 00:45:17.467
idea I'm going to write her
00:45:17.487 --> 00:45:18.327
name down I'm going to call
00:45:18.367 --> 00:45:19.548
on her if she doesn't bring
00:45:19.588 --> 00:45:20.869
up her idea I might bring
00:45:20.889 --> 00:45:21.989
her in myself because no
00:45:22.030 --> 00:45:22.670
one else has written this
00:45:22.751 --> 00:45:23.632
idea down yet I want to
00:45:23.652 --> 00:45:25.012
hear what kids think right
00:45:25.032 --> 00:45:27.074
so I'm taking some notes um
00:45:27.114 --> 00:45:28.815
we let students turn and
00:45:28.855 --> 00:45:30.896
talk with a peer so there's
00:45:30.916 --> 00:45:31.617
a little bit of an oral
00:45:31.657 --> 00:45:32.577
rehearsal for what they're
00:45:32.597 --> 00:45:33.418
going to say sometimes we
00:45:33.438 --> 00:45:34.378
do it in small groups you
00:45:34.398 --> 00:45:35.340
can do it both ways I've
00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:36.960
done it in both ways um
00:45:37.001 --> 00:45:38.782
where like so by the time
00:45:38.822 --> 00:45:40.222
discourse starts think of
00:45:40.242 --> 00:45:42.023
what that means everyone
00:45:42.244 --> 00:45:43.045
has a time to think
00:45:44.143 --> 00:45:45.585
Teacher knows what people are thinking.
00:45:46.184 --> 00:45:47.846
Everyone has had time to speak,
00:45:47.865 --> 00:45:48.646
a hundred percent.
00:45:48.666 --> 00:45:49.666
A hundred percent of kids in
00:45:49.686 --> 00:45:50.668
class have been heard,
00:45:51.068 --> 00:45:52.128
which is a great way of
00:45:52.168 --> 00:45:53.070
bringing in reluctant
00:45:53.110 --> 00:45:54.389
voices to your conversation
00:45:54.409 --> 00:45:55.710
who might normally have not
00:45:55.751 --> 00:45:56.311
said something.
00:45:56.791 --> 00:45:56.931
Well,
00:45:56.972 --> 00:45:58.632
now they've talked with a peer and
00:45:58.652 --> 00:45:59.793
they're like, this is a cool idea.
00:46:00.474 --> 00:46:01.213
uh you can build your
00:46:01.233 --> 00:46:02.155
classroom culture where
00:46:02.175 --> 00:46:03.315
sometimes people say my
00:46:03.355 --> 00:46:03.994
partner said something
00:46:04.034 --> 00:46:05.416
really good I really want
00:46:05.436 --> 00:46:06.155
them to share I'm going to
00:46:06.175 --> 00:46:07.056
try to paraphrase it and
00:46:07.076 --> 00:46:08.396
then partner I want you to
00:46:08.777 --> 00:46:09.817
add on anything that I've
00:46:09.856 --> 00:46:10.577
missed right there's lots
00:46:10.597 --> 00:46:12.217
of cool things we can do to
00:46:12.277 --> 00:46:13.797
invite kids voices in so
00:46:13.818 --> 00:46:14.998
that that conversation is
00:46:15.038 --> 00:46:17.039
student-centered um and
00:46:17.079 --> 00:46:17.958
it's not just me hoping
00:46:17.978 --> 00:46:18.619
kids are going to be in a
00:46:18.659 --> 00:46:20.139
mood to talk uh because
00:46:20.159 --> 00:46:21.179
sometimes they are and
00:46:21.239 --> 00:46:22.800
sometimes it's a weekday
00:46:22.981 --> 00:46:26.141
and they're not so you know
00:46:26.181 --> 00:46:27.222
we find ways to bring them in
00:46:27.903 --> 00:46:28.103
Yeah.
00:46:28.903 --> 00:46:29.704
So, Stephen,
00:46:30.405 --> 00:46:32.804
I was really big into Socratic
00:46:32.864 --> 00:46:35.005
Seminar when I was in high
00:46:35.025 --> 00:46:35.826
school classroom.
00:46:36.766 --> 00:46:37.445
Everything you're saying
00:46:37.465 --> 00:46:39.065
just resonates with me right now.
00:46:40.266 --> 00:46:41.507
And it was one of those
00:46:41.586 --> 00:46:44.027
things where Socratic
00:46:44.067 --> 00:46:44.927
Seminar was one of those
00:46:44.967 --> 00:46:47.708
things where kids were like, dang it,
00:46:47.748 --> 00:46:50.728
the bell rang.
00:46:50.768 --> 00:46:51.128
They were like,
00:46:51.708 --> 00:46:53.188
we can do this all day
00:46:53.268 --> 00:46:54.630
because it's something that
00:46:54.650 --> 00:46:56.130
they've been told not to do.
00:46:57.385 --> 00:46:59.286
for years in classrooms is
00:46:59.307 --> 00:47:01.528
like be quiet do the shut
00:47:01.568 --> 00:47:04.552
up sheet right and now I
00:47:04.572 --> 00:47:07.793
like I would I empower them
00:47:08.014 --> 00:47:09.876
with that voice and because
00:47:09.916 --> 00:47:10.936
it's so student-centered
00:47:10.976 --> 00:47:11.817
and it hits so many
00:47:11.856 --> 00:47:13.637
different boxes not just
00:47:13.659 --> 00:47:15.179
with literacy but just like
00:47:15.699 --> 00:47:17.742
the essential skills of
00:47:17.762 --> 00:47:18.842
being in the workforce
00:47:18.902 --> 00:47:20.583
right and being in industry
00:47:22.644 --> 00:47:23.885
Sophie made a point in a
00:47:23.945 --> 00:47:25.067
private chat of just like
00:47:25.947 --> 00:47:27.309
the role of technology with
00:47:27.731 --> 00:47:31.253
all of this right um the the
00:47:31.293 --> 00:47:33.375
shy student the student
00:47:33.394 --> 00:47:35.416
that is maybe not as
00:47:35.476 --> 00:47:37.336
confident comfortable with
00:47:37.657 --> 00:47:39.358
speaking or listening in
00:47:39.498 --> 00:47:41.500
english right um there's
00:47:41.519 --> 00:47:43.460
just so many different ways
00:47:43.541 --> 00:47:45.681
that you can go about it um
00:47:45.742 --> 00:47:47.083
but I do feel that as a
00:47:47.182 --> 00:47:48.923
people the civil discourse
00:47:49.844 --> 00:47:51.826
is something that we all
00:47:51.846 --> 00:47:53.367
need help with like
00:47:54.277 --> 00:47:56.480
Like you go up on social media,
00:47:56.820 --> 00:47:58.461
you look at that social discourse.
00:47:58.481 --> 00:48:00.945
And that's why it was such a
00:48:01.005 --> 00:48:02.246
priority for me.
00:48:02.286 --> 00:48:02.465
Yeah.
00:48:03.007 --> 00:48:04.489
I always say like, you know,
00:48:04.608 --> 00:48:05.710
our kids don't like need us
00:48:05.730 --> 00:48:06.971
to teach them to talk with each other.
00:48:06.990 --> 00:48:07.110
Right.
00:48:07.130 --> 00:48:08.672
You can find your students
00:48:08.932 --> 00:48:10.014
in the lunchroom or after
00:48:10.074 --> 00:48:11.195
school and they're talking.
00:48:11.695 --> 00:48:11.916
Right.
00:48:12.215 --> 00:48:13.398
But what they what they do
00:48:13.438 --> 00:48:15.480
need our support and coaching with is.
00:48:15.880 --> 00:48:16.860
is how to have like an
00:48:16.900 --> 00:48:18.983
intellectual or an academic conversation,
00:48:19.483 --> 00:48:21.887
a civil debate with each other, right?
00:48:21.907 --> 00:48:22.186
And then,
00:48:22.286 --> 00:48:22.947
so one of the things that we
00:48:22.967 --> 00:48:24.528
share in the book are, you know,
00:48:24.548 --> 00:48:25.710
what we call habits of discourse,
00:48:25.751 --> 00:48:26.471
where they're just like
00:48:26.512 --> 00:48:27.753
different moves that kids can make.
00:48:27.773 --> 00:48:29.153
And we teach these moves to
00:48:29.173 --> 00:48:30.235
them and we practice them.
00:48:30.896 --> 00:48:31.617
So they get really good.
00:48:31.637 --> 00:48:32.177
So that,
00:48:32.378 --> 00:48:33.798
to get back to our analogy from earlier,
00:48:33.838 --> 00:48:33.958
right?
00:48:33.978 --> 00:48:34.559
When you walk into that
00:48:34.579 --> 00:48:35.400
classroom and you're like,
00:48:35.440 --> 00:48:36.802
you just see the kids talking like, wow,
00:48:37.422 --> 00:48:39.063
They're like, you know, Steve,
00:48:39.103 --> 00:48:40.025
I respectfully disagree
00:48:40.045 --> 00:48:40.885
with your point because on
00:48:40.905 --> 00:48:41.726
page ninety seven,
00:48:41.766 --> 00:48:42.567
if you'll turn with me
00:48:42.827 --> 00:48:43.708
right there saying phrases
00:48:43.728 --> 00:48:45.429
like that and you're like, wow,
00:48:45.469 --> 00:48:46.369
when I asked my students,
00:48:46.389 --> 00:48:47.891
they're just like, no, Steve's dummy.
00:48:48.231 --> 00:48:49.373
And that's all I'm going to say.
00:48:49.413 --> 00:48:49.612
Right.
00:48:49.652 --> 00:48:51.614
Like so like, you know,
00:48:51.655 --> 00:48:53.115
we've we've practiced those things.
00:48:53.135 --> 00:48:54.277
We've given them language.
00:48:54.297 --> 00:48:55.978
We've given them resources
00:48:56.018 --> 00:48:57.358
and references to use to
00:48:57.398 --> 00:48:58.380
build up that skill.
00:48:58.721 --> 00:49:00.902
So I think that like to me,
00:49:02.284 --> 00:49:03.063
one of our core ideas in
00:49:03.083 --> 00:49:04.105
the book is that discourse
00:49:04.125 --> 00:49:05.226
is talk that changes what
00:49:05.266 --> 00:49:06.166
and how we think.
00:49:06.666 --> 00:49:07.447
like we could have called it
00:49:07.467 --> 00:49:08.568
discussion we're not trying
00:49:08.588 --> 00:49:10.170
to be like snooty or
00:49:10.250 --> 00:49:11.231
pedantic by calling it
00:49:11.271 --> 00:49:12.172
discourse but we wanted to
00:49:12.211 --> 00:49:13.733
distinguish like when you
00:49:13.793 --> 00:49:14.873
have a really good class
00:49:14.914 --> 00:49:16.755
discourse you are changing
00:49:16.795 --> 00:49:18.797
minds uh or or even if
00:49:18.818 --> 00:49:19.597
you're not changing a mind
00:49:19.617 --> 00:49:20.298
you're reaffirming
00:49:20.318 --> 00:49:21.099
someone's belief but now
00:49:21.119 --> 00:49:21.780
they can say it more
00:49:21.840 --> 00:49:22.521
forcefully and more
00:49:22.581 --> 00:49:24.422
precisely um because they
00:49:24.481 --> 00:49:25.603
have better evidence that's
00:49:25.643 --> 00:49:26.983
a big one I agree with you I used to
00:49:28.105 --> 00:49:28.885
I remember the first time I
00:49:28.905 --> 00:49:31.126
ran a Socratic and kids were so on it.
00:49:31.586 --> 00:49:32.847
So then I just started saying every day,
00:49:32.867 --> 00:49:33.047
I'm like,
00:49:33.068 --> 00:49:33.688
we're going to have a mini
00:49:33.728 --> 00:49:34.387
Socratic today.
00:49:34.407 --> 00:49:36.068
I just called every class
00:49:36.489 --> 00:49:37.650
discussion Socratic because
00:49:37.690 --> 00:49:39.110
there was something about to your point,
00:49:39.130 --> 00:49:39.271
Steve.
00:49:40.393 --> 00:49:42.032
kids just thought that
00:49:42.393 --> 00:49:43.474
discussion meant something
00:49:43.534 --> 00:49:44.713
different than Socratic.
00:49:44.733 --> 00:49:45.514
I'm like, it's the same thing.
00:49:45.914 --> 00:49:46.735
I want you to do most of the
00:49:46.755 --> 00:49:48.235
talking and then I'm going
00:49:48.295 --> 00:49:49.556
to maybe pop in with a
00:49:49.596 --> 00:49:50.996
question or two to push us
00:49:51.016 --> 00:49:52.315
along and we can't get any further.
00:49:52.817 --> 00:49:54.617
But I want you to own this.
00:49:55.496 --> 00:49:57.018
I've read this book a hundred times.
00:49:57.597 --> 00:49:59.338
This is your class experience,
00:49:59.358 --> 00:50:00.398
your educational experience.
00:50:00.438 --> 00:50:01.079
I want you to feel
00:50:02.659 --> 00:50:04.920
ownership co-ownership maybe
00:50:05.300 --> 00:50:06.139
of what's happening like
00:50:06.159 --> 00:50:06.940
we're all members of a
00:50:06.980 --> 00:50:08.880
classroom community and so
00:50:08.920 --> 00:50:10.521
like the conversation that
00:50:10.541 --> 00:50:11.601
we produce belongs to all
00:50:11.641 --> 00:50:12.922
of us and I think you're
00:50:12.961 --> 00:50:14.202
right like once kids start
00:50:14.222 --> 00:50:15.443
to feel that they don't
00:50:15.463 --> 00:50:16.422
want to turn away from it
00:50:16.963 --> 00:50:17.802
because who doesn't like
00:50:17.882 --> 00:50:19.643
talking about ideas and you
00:50:20.983 --> 00:50:21.864
like that is that's like
00:50:21.903 --> 00:50:23.083
the whole my favorite
00:50:23.103 --> 00:50:24.625
memories of high school even
00:50:25.659 --> 00:50:27.681
know as I'm old an old man
00:50:27.740 --> 00:50:28.780
now like I just remember
00:50:28.840 --> 00:50:30.001
like leaving a class and
00:50:30.021 --> 00:50:31.601
like spilling into the hall
00:50:31.862 --> 00:50:32.983
and talking about like
00:50:33.083 --> 00:50:33.762
whatever you know talking
00:50:33.782 --> 00:50:34.882
about existentialism
00:50:35.222 --> 00:50:35.983
because I couldn't stop
00:50:36.023 --> 00:50:38.164
thinking about you know the
00:50:38.204 --> 00:50:39.844
stranger or camus and I'm
00:50:39.885 --> 00:50:40.505
like oh wait a minute what
00:50:40.545 --> 00:50:41.405
about this and we read the
00:50:41.425 --> 00:50:42.385
myth of sisyphus and I'm
00:50:42.425 --> 00:50:43.226
wondering about this and
00:50:43.686 --> 00:50:44.867
and like I think that like
00:50:45.876 --> 00:50:47.317
you know those experiences
00:50:47.396 --> 00:50:49.918
shape shape lives and minds
00:50:49.938 --> 00:50:50.918
like I don't want kids to
00:50:50.958 --> 00:50:52.018
think a certain thing but I
00:50:52.059 --> 00:50:52.858
want them to fall in love
00:50:52.878 --> 00:50:55.201
with thinking uh and what
00:50:55.221 --> 00:50:56.780
it can do for them that
00:50:56.800 --> 00:50:57.902
fall in love with thinking
00:50:57.981 --> 00:51:00.463
yes and I do want to I was
00:51:00.603 --> 00:51:02.063
not a direct instructor
00:51:03.817 --> 00:51:04.757
Oh, that's okay, Sophie.
00:51:05.157 --> 00:51:08.940
Because I was very into the thinking.
00:51:09.059 --> 00:51:10.641
I taught them how to think.
00:51:10.740 --> 00:51:12.340
And I would start out as
00:51:12.380 --> 00:51:14.061
being a direct instructor
00:51:14.081 --> 00:51:15.663
because that's what they were used to.
00:51:16.483 --> 00:51:17.523
But then we would slowly
00:51:17.563 --> 00:51:18.625
move into these groups.
00:51:18.724 --> 00:51:21.445
And I was very student-centered.
00:51:21.505 --> 00:51:24.168
And my biggest strength was
00:51:24.228 --> 00:51:25.047
not answering their
00:51:25.088 --> 00:51:26.568
questions with answers.
00:51:27.329 --> 00:51:28.650
I would ask them more
00:51:28.730 --> 00:51:30.992
questions to guide them to the answer.
00:51:31.672 --> 00:51:33.373
And it was the hardest
00:51:34.474 --> 00:51:35.795
teaching strategy for me to
00:51:35.835 --> 00:51:37.034
learn how to do and to stay
00:51:37.054 --> 00:51:38.275
consistent doing it because
00:51:38.376 --> 00:51:38.896
I want to just give
00:51:38.936 --> 00:51:39.577
everybody the answers.
00:51:41.297 --> 00:51:43.298
But it was the strongest
00:51:43.438 --> 00:51:44.800
strategy I ever did and
00:51:44.840 --> 00:51:46.001
implemented it in my classroom.
00:51:46.021 --> 00:51:48.141
And I continued it my entire six years.
00:51:48.181 --> 00:51:49.943
And then also when I became a coach,
00:51:50.342 --> 00:51:52.144
I asked questions instead
00:51:52.184 --> 00:51:53.746
of providing answers.
00:51:55.567 --> 00:51:56.007
And it,
00:51:56.757 --> 00:51:58.778
To this day, that is something that I do,
00:51:58.798 --> 00:52:00.460
and I think it helps me.
00:52:00.481 --> 00:52:01.061
Be one of the most
00:52:01.081 --> 00:52:03.782
accommodating people when
00:52:03.822 --> 00:52:04.963
it comes to my teachers and.
00:52:05.804 --> 00:52:07.164
The students that I taught, so I do,
00:52:07.244 --> 00:52:08.806
I just wanted to put that out there.
00:52:09.266 --> 00:52:11.228
Oh, sure.
00:52:11.688 --> 00:52:12.989
There's an e comings quote,
00:52:13.469 --> 00:52:14.530
he says always the
00:52:14.550 --> 00:52:15.751
beautiful answer that asks
00:52:15.831 --> 00:52:16.891
a more beautiful question.
00:52:17.972 --> 00:52:19.134
So,
00:52:19.353 --> 00:52:21.175
I think the questions that we ask our
00:52:21.215 --> 00:52:21.695
students.
00:52:22.568 --> 00:52:24.190
are super, super powerful.
00:52:24.269 --> 00:52:25.550
And I will not weigh in on,
00:52:25.610 --> 00:52:26.692
I know there's a whole like
00:52:26.952 --> 00:52:28.353
math community debate about
00:52:28.413 --> 00:52:29.713
different styles of math.
00:52:29.954 --> 00:52:31.936
And I'm happy to report that
00:52:31.976 --> 00:52:33.076
I'm completely unqualified
00:52:33.115 --> 00:52:35.318
to weigh in on.
00:52:36.079 --> 00:52:37.619
So all I meant was that I
00:52:37.639 --> 00:52:38.320
was sure you were pretty
00:52:38.380 --> 00:52:40.181
versed in those kinds of
00:52:40.221 --> 00:52:41.402
conversations or in gradual
00:52:41.422 --> 00:52:42.623
release of responsibility,
00:52:42.663 --> 00:52:43.684
which I know is something
00:52:43.744 --> 00:52:45.704
that like it's English class.
00:52:45.724 --> 00:52:47.005
It's not that we don't use
00:52:47.065 --> 00:52:47.927
those different models,
00:52:47.947 --> 00:52:49.288
but so much of English
00:52:49.788 --> 00:52:53.309
is centered on discourse or
00:52:53.329 --> 00:52:54.349
is centered on reading or
00:52:54.409 --> 00:52:55.289
centered on writing.
00:52:56.690 --> 00:52:57.291
It's a lot of that.
00:52:57.351 --> 00:52:58.592
And part of the reason is like,
00:52:58.612 --> 00:52:59.211
if I think about the
00:52:59.251 --> 00:53:00.253
research base is that like
00:53:00.512 --> 00:53:02.233
those things aren't brand, you know,
00:53:02.773 --> 00:53:03.813
after elementary, right?
00:53:03.833 --> 00:53:04.855
Like middle and high school
00:53:04.875 --> 00:53:05.855
students aren't writing a
00:53:05.954 --> 00:53:07.315
paragraph for the first time.
00:53:08.376 --> 00:53:09.416
So we're kind of like,
00:53:11.416 --> 00:53:13.498
there's a guy named Greg Ashman actually,
00:53:13.557 --> 00:53:14.858
he's written a book about
00:53:14.878 --> 00:53:15.418
direct instruction.
00:53:15.438 --> 00:53:15.579
He says,
00:53:15.599 --> 00:53:17.239
all teaching happens halfway up a ladder.
00:53:17.500 --> 00:53:18.621
uh and I always think yeah
00:53:18.641 --> 00:53:19.460
like the goal for our
00:53:19.501 --> 00:53:20.402
teachers if you're where on
00:53:20.422 --> 00:53:21.342
the where in that ladder
00:53:21.382 --> 00:53:22.922
are my kids and once I know
00:53:22.943 --> 00:53:23.704
where on that ladder my
00:53:23.724 --> 00:53:24.905
kids are what is the best
00:53:24.945 --> 00:53:27.146
strategy to meet them um
00:53:27.206 --> 00:53:28.106
are they totally brand new
00:53:28.126 --> 00:53:29.768
to this um are they
00:53:29.847 --> 00:53:31.268
somewhere in the middle are
00:53:31.289 --> 00:53:32.168
they at the high point and
00:53:32.188 --> 00:53:33.010
we're just gonna like start
00:53:33.050 --> 00:53:34.931
dancing uh with it with a
00:53:34.951 --> 00:53:37.052
different way so anyway I I
00:53:37.112 --> 00:53:38.092
your points well taken
00:53:39.452 --> 00:53:40.751
Well, thank you.
00:53:40.791 --> 00:53:41.112
First,
00:53:41.373 --> 00:53:42.632
how do you remember everybody's
00:53:42.713 --> 00:53:44.353
names and all these quotes from people?
00:53:44.373 --> 00:53:45.713
Like, I just I can't.
00:53:45.753 --> 00:53:46.574
That's just not something
00:53:46.614 --> 00:53:47.574
that I have a strength for.
00:53:47.693 --> 00:53:48.153
And I'm don't.
00:53:48.213 --> 00:53:49.173
That's a rhetorical question.
00:53:49.213 --> 00:53:50.414
And the other thing is a
00:53:50.474 --> 00:53:51.335
theme that you keep coming
00:53:51.355 --> 00:53:54.655
back to is meeting kids where they are.
00:53:56.356 --> 00:53:57.655
And yes,
00:53:58.717 --> 00:54:00.536
I don't know how many times I
00:54:00.577 --> 00:54:01.536
walked into a classroom as
00:54:01.597 --> 00:54:02.456
a kid and they were like, well,
00:54:02.476 --> 00:54:03.617
you were taught this last year,
00:54:03.657 --> 00:54:04.418
so we're not going to.
00:54:07.594 --> 00:54:08.856
Meet them where they are.
00:54:10.396 --> 00:54:11.976
Go and do the just-in-time teaching,
00:54:12.016 --> 00:54:14.277
because obviously it didn't stick.
00:54:15.338 --> 00:54:16.900
Or maybe it was said in a different way,
00:54:16.980 --> 00:54:17.619
or maybe they don't
00:54:17.679 --> 00:54:18.880
actually remember learning it,
00:54:18.900 --> 00:54:19.661
but they will remember the
00:54:19.701 --> 00:54:20.641
activity that you did.
00:54:20.922 --> 00:54:22.222
My kids were going home from
00:54:22.242 --> 00:54:23.702
when I was taught science one year,
00:54:23.943 --> 00:54:24.563
and they said, oh,
00:54:24.583 --> 00:54:26.164
we just did arts and crafts and science.
00:54:26.465 --> 00:54:27.585
But they said that because
00:54:27.625 --> 00:54:29.306
we were actually doing hands-on,
00:54:29.445 --> 00:54:31.507
cutting things apart, placing and gluing,
00:54:31.586 --> 00:54:32.467
and they were learning
00:54:32.507 --> 00:54:34.668
vocabulary and identifying
00:54:34.789 --> 00:54:35.668
the instruments that we
00:54:35.688 --> 00:54:37.030
were going to be using in labs.
00:54:38.085 --> 00:54:39.367
They didn't know they were learning.
00:54:39.867 --> 00:54:41.367
They were just doing arts and crafts.
00:54:42.907 --> 00:54:44.869
But they were able to identify the stuff.
00:54:45.289 --> 00:54:46.449
They literally said that.
00:54:46.530 --> 00:54:47.411
I'm like, are you serious?
00:54:47.610 --> 00:54:49.731
Anyways, I digress.
00:54:50.192 --> 00:54:50.532
But yeah,
00:54:50.572 --> 00:54:52.693
meeting kids where they are is so
00:54:52.733 --> 00:54:53.213
important.
00:54:53.233 --> 00:54:54.054
And I think one of the
00:54:54.114 --> 00:54:55.054
things that is really
00:54:55.094 --> 00:54:56.614
important in literacy is
00:54:56.655 --> 00:54:57.735
that background knowledge.
00:54:58.275 --> 00:54:59.777
And I've been in some
00:54:59.817 --> 00:55:01.657
curriculums where they do, like,
00:55:02.719 --> 00:55:03.458
I'm from West Virginia.
00:55:03.478 --> 00:55:04.298
There are a lot of kids that
00:55:04.358 --> 00:55:05.360
have never even seen the beach.
00:55:06.231 --> 00:55:07.373
Unless it's been in a picture.
00:55:07.992 --> 00:55:09.934
So like you need to,
00:55:10.014 --> 00:55:10.934
if you're talking about a
00:55:10.974 --> 00:55:12.195
story that's located on a beach,
00:55:12.215 --> 00:55:13.155
you've got to like bring in
00:55:13.175 --> 00:55:14.197
that background knowledge.
00:55:14.257 --> 00:55:15.456
Maybe you're going to bring in sand.
00:55:15.476 --> 00:55:16.958
Maybe you're going to play
00:55:17.318 --> 00:55:19.018
the ocean waves in audio.
00:55:19.039 --> 00:55:21.059
So they get some context to
00:55:21.139 --> 00:55:22.981
make the learning to life.
00:55:23.021 --> 00:55:24.842
And I think that is an
00:55:24.902 --> 00:55:26.523
extremely meeting a student
00:55:26.784 --> 00:55:29.625
where they are is one of
00:55:29.644 --> 00:55:31.186
the most pivotal things
00:55:31.226 --> 00:55:33.708
that any teacher that I,
00:55:33.768 --> 00:55:34.507
you keep saying it,
00:55:35.478 --> 00:55:35.858
in here.
00:55:35.878 --> 00:55:36.998
So that's like your theme
00:55:38.119 --> 00:55:39.019
for this conversation.
00:55:39.139 --> 00:55:40.721
And I cannot tell you how
00:55:40.780 --> 00:55:43.422
much I support that more than anything.
00:55:43.442 --> 00:55:45.202
Oh, I'd love to hear that.
00:55:45.884 --> 00:55:46.184
Yeah, look,
00:55:46.204 --> 00:55:48.025
the background knowledge is
00:55:48.085 --> 00:55:49.105
like there's a lot of
00:55:49.146 --> 00:55:51.246
things that make up literacy, right?
00:55:52.007 --> 00:55:53.088
It's not one single thing.
00:55:53.108 --> 00:55:54.208
But if you're looking for a power tool,
00:55:54.268 --> 00:55:54.989
background knowledge has
00:55:55.048 --> 00:55:56.369
got to be one of them, right?
00:55:56.429 --> 00:55:57.670
We know that when you have
00:55:57.730 --> 00:55:58.391
background knowledge,
00:55:58.650 --> 00:56:00.411
you can read texts that are that are
00:56:01.211 --> 00:56:03.673
harder and sort of above the
00:56:03.713 --> 00:56:04.353
level that you might be
00:56:04.414 --> 00:56:06.034
expected to read otherwise,
00:56:06.114 --> 00:56:06.876
because you have, you know,
00:56:07.376 --> 00:56:08.717
it's like that, you know,
00:56:08.737 --> 00:56:09.938
your nephew who like reads
00:56:09.958 --> 00:56:12.039
about like dinosaurs and
00:56:12.059 --> 00:56:13.159
suddenly is reading a text
00:56:13.179 --> 00:56:13.920
where you're like, wait a minute,
00:56:13.960 --> 00:56:15.300
this is like college level
00:56:15.460 --> 00:56:16.481
dinosaur article you're
00:56:16.501 --> 00:56:17.302
reading here because
00:56:17.322 --> 00:56:18.503
they've read so much and they know,
00:56:19.083 --> 00:56:20.545
or Marvel or whatever the thing is,
00:56:20.804 --> 00:56:22.085
they know so much about, right?
00:56:22.706 --> 00:56:23.666
uh and there's some research
00:56:23.686 --> 00:56:24.588
that I believe it's star
00:56:24.628 --> 00:56:26.449
wars for steve oh yeah oh
00:56:26.469 --> 00:56:27.789
we could that's right I
00:56:27.849 --> 00:56:28.990
remember that from our last
00:56:29.030 --> 00:56:29.831
conversation we could do a
00:56:29.871 --> 00:56:31.432
whole a whole star wars
00:56:31.452 --> 00:56:33.074
thing and go really deep um
00:56:33.114 --> 00:56:35.436
uh and some of the
00:56:35.675 --> 00:56:36.715
depending on the authors
00:56:36.996 --> 00:56:37.896
some of that reading is
00:56:37.936 --> 00:56:41.300
quite challenging um yeah
00:56:41.360 --> 00:56:42.320
especially some of the old
00:56:42.360 --> 00:56:45.402
school like legend stuff it's um
00:56:46.498 --> 00:56:47.719
And now it's all making a comeback.
00:56:48.219 --> 00:56:48.539
That'll be,
00:56:48.840 --> 00:56:49.760
I'll come back and we'll do
00:56:49.780 --> 00:56:51.663
like a Star Wars.
00:56:51.842 --> 00:56:52.722
I just want to learn though.
00:56:52.983 --> 00:56:53.744
I grew up on it.
00:56:54.204 --> 00:56:55.065
I'm one of the rare,
00:56:55.284 --> 00:56:57.346
I'm a Star Trek and Star Wars person.
00:56:57.427 --> 00:57:00.108
I'm like ambi sci-fi dexterous.
00:57:00.128 --> 00:57:00.568
Yeah.
00:57:01.927 --> 00:57:03.889
And my wife is now into Star Wars.
00:57:03.929 --> 00:57:05.050
When I met her, it was only Star Trek,
00:57:05.070 --> 00:57:06.570
but that was an early connection point.
00:57:07.771 --> 00:57:09.693
So love that stuff.
00:57:09.713 --> 00:57:10.233
But yeah,
00:57:11.313 --> 00:57:13.474
the power of just like knowing
00:57:13.514 --> 00:57:15.135
things and be able to bring
00:57:15.155 --> 00:57:16.637
that information to bear on
00:57:16.677 --> 00:57:19.978
a text is really, it's hard to deny.
00:57:21.298 --> 00:57:22.019
And that's one of the topics
00:57:22.039 --> 00:57:22.980
we talk a lot about in the book.
00:57:23.019 --> 00:57:24.820
We also talk about like what
00:57:24.840 --> 00:57:26.161
we attend to when we read.
00:57:26.202 --> 00:57:26.702
Like, you know,
00:57:26.722 --> 00:57:28.023
when I read and I see a word like,
00:57:28.612 --> 00:57:30.052
Like, however, or I see a phrase like,
00:57:30.132 --> 00:57:31.313
in other words, I'm like, oh,
00:57:31.373 --> 00:57:32.135
in other words, great.
00:57:32.215 --> 00:57:33.396
Cause that last paragraph was dense.
00:57:33.675 --> 00:57:34.817
And now you're gonna summarize it.
00:57:34.836 --> 00:57:35.737
Like my brain, like my,
00:57:36.077 --> 00:57:37.438
if I have a pen out, like it's like, okay,
00:57:37.458 --> 00:57:38.800
getting ready to annotate
00:57:38.820 --> 00:57:39.980
right here because I know that.
00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:40.900
And we teach those things
00:57:41.280 --> 00:57:42.342
explicitly to kids, right?
00:57:42.362 --> 00:57:42.902
Cause the other thing that
00:57:42.922 --> 00:57:43.802
we were saying was like
00:57:43.882 --> 00:57:46.885
some things that we do by instinct
00:57:47.606 --> 00:57:48.005
you know,
00:57:48.365 --> 00:57:49.507
waiting for someone to stop
00:57:49.567 --> 00:57:51.648
speaking before we speak or
00:57:52.547 --> 00:57:55.269
politely disagreeing or knowing that, oh,
00:57:55.289 --> 00:57:56.389
this is going to be a key idea.
00:57:56.449 --> 00:57:58.150
I know this is a key idea in this passage.
00:57:58.170 --> 00:57:59.771
This is a newspaper article.
00:57:59.851 --> 00:58:01.572
I know the first couple of
00:58:01.592 --> 00:58:02.952
paragraphs are probably an anecdote.
00:58:03.092 --> 00:58:04.273
And like the big like what
00:58:04.293 --> 00:58:05.994
this is about paragraph, the nut graph,
00:58:06.074 --> 00:58:07.614
as we might say in journalism,
00:58:07.635 --> 00:58:08.735
like it's going to be maybe
00:58:08.815 --> 00:58:10.115
four or five paragraphs in
00:58:10.396 --> 00:58:11.617
like we know those things instinctively.
00:58:11.657 --> 00:58:12.757
We don't think about them
00:58:13.938 --> 00:58:15.539
and we can make them clear for kids.
00:58:15.778 --> 00:58:16.659
There was some cool research
00:58:16.679 --> 00:58:18.059
a while back where they
00:58:18.099 --> 00:58:18.820
talked about something
00:58:18.840 --> 00:58:20.739
called the illusion of explanatory depth,
00:58:21.260 --> 00:58:23.240
which is a fun, super nerdy name.
00:58:23.260 --> 00:58:23.940
But it's basically,
00:58:24.202 --> 00:58:25.001
there's so many things in
00:58:25.021 --> 00:58:26.322
our world that we think we
00:58:26.342 --> 00:58:26.981
know how they work.
00:58:27.001 --> 00:58:28.983
We don't even realize that we don't.
00:58:29.003 --> 00:58:29.543
They ask people,
00:58:29.802 --> 00:58:31.204
explain how a ballpoint pen works.
00:58:31.244 --> 00:58:31.903
People go, I know how.
00:58:31.923 --> 00:58:32.764
And they're like, OK, we'll map it out.
00:58:32.784 --> 00:58:33.384
And they're like, oh,
00:58:33.423 --> 00:58:34.885
there's a ball and some ink,
00:58:34.925 --> 00:58:35.844
and it rolls in the ink.
00:58:37.005 --> 00:58:38.206
Or they did it with a toilet.
00:58:38.226 --> 00:58:39.085
How does the toilet work?
00:58:39.405 --> 00:58:40.726
How does it actually have pressure?
00:58:40.786 --> 00:58:41.807
What is making the pressure?
00:58:41.827 --> 00:58:43.188
If it's on the third floor of your house,
00:58:43.449 --> 00:58:44.489
what's making the water,
00:58:44.889 --> 00:58:45.789
when you hit flush,
00:58:45.909 --> 00:58:47.831
what makes that like work
00:58:47.851 --> 00:58:48.893
and what makes it refill?
00:58:49.432 --> 00:58:50.253
And, you know.
00:58:50.454 --> 00:58:51.614
It swirls.
00:58:52.554 --> 00:58:53.335
Yeah, that is correct.
00:58:53.376 --> 00:58:53.635
Yeah,
00:58:53.715 --> 00:58:55.396
it's humbling when you realize like
00:58:55.416 --> 00:58:55.856
how many,
00:58:56.137 --> 00:58:59.099
how much we have to rely on
00:58:59.159 --> 00:59:01.121
folks just for things to, you know,
00:59:01.521 --> 00:59:02.141
this morning,
00:59:02.621 --> 00:59:04.103
my car wasn't starting and it's like,
00:59:04.182 --> 00:59:07.545
okay, like I'm going to rely on, you know,
00:59:07.804 --> 00:59:08.465
the fact that like,
00:59:08.925 --> 00:59:09.947
magically these jumper
00:59:09.987 --> 00:59:12.588
cables can like make my car start.
00:59:12.688 --> 00:59:14.028
Like my dad was an electrical engineer,
00:59:14.048 --> 00:59:14.650
but I was not.
00:59:14.909 --> 00:59:15.751
So I'm like,
00:59:16.070 --> 00:59:17.931
I kind of know sort of what's happening,
00:59:17.972 --> 00:59:19.112
but if you ask me to explain it,
00:59:19.172 --> 00:59:19.952
I could not do that.
00:59:20.793 --> 00:59:21.673
I'm grateful that someone
00:59:21.713 --> 00:59:23.896
can and someone built the jumper cables.
00:59:23.936 --> 00:59:25.175
And if I'm not sure where to connect them,
00:59:25.215 --> 00:59:26.217
I can go on YouTube and
00:59:26.237 --> 00:59:27.038
look it up real quick.
00:59:27.057 --> 00:59:28.659
Like I'm really grateful for that.
00:59:28.679 --> 00:59:30.159
And there's so much of our
00:59:30.219 --> 00:59:31.400
lives that we like,
00:59:31.721 --> 00:59:32.360
don't even realize how much
00:59:32.380 --> 00:59:33.762
we rely on the collective
00:59:33.782 --> 00:59:35.242
wisdom of our entire like
00:59:35.643 --> 00:59:37.503
like the species uh just to
00:59:37.523 --> 00:59:38.425
get throughout our days and
00:59:38.505 --> 00:59:39.726
I think it just for me it's
00:59:39.766 --> 00:59:41.266
it's a nice it connects to
00:59:41.286 --> 00:59:42.447
the idea that like as
00:59:42.507 --> 00:59:44.748
teachers we it's it's easy
00:59:44.789 --> 00:59:46.751
to forget in in for where
00:59:46.791 --> 00:59:49.492
we are that like there's so
00:59:49.512 --> 00:59:50.632
many things that we didn't
00:59:50.672 --> 00:59:51.614
know for so long and that
00:59:51.634 --> 00:59:53.054
we still don't know and if
00:59:53.074 --> 00:59:53.936
you're a student you're
00:59:53.976 --> 00:59:54.896
reminded of that all the
00:59:54.936 --> 00:59:57.018
time um and often by people
00:59:57.057 --> 00:59:57.978
who forgot that they didn't
00:59:57.998 --> 00:59:59.259
know this stuff fifteen
00:59:59.298 --> 01:00:00.300
twenty thirty years ago
01:00:00.360 --> 01:00:01.920
however old you are right the um like
01:00:03.601 --> 01:00:05.844
I think it's nice because it's humbling.
01:00:05.884 --> 01:00:07.065
It reminds us of what the
01:00:07.105 --> 01:00:08.746
experience is to be a student.
01:00:09.286 --> 01:00:10.748
And for things that feel obvious to us,
01:00:10.807 --> 01:00:12.130
maybe not to feel obvious yet,
01:00:12.150 --> 01:00:12.909
because how could they?
01:00:13.210 --> 01:00:17.434
Our kids are like, ten, twelve, fifteen.
01:00:17.474 --> 01:00:19.516
It takes a while to start to
01:00:19.876 --> 01:00:21.056
make these things automatic
01:00:21.398 --> 01:00:21.797
and to build the
01:00:21.818 --> 01:00:23.358
automaticity of reading and
01:00:23.398 --> 01:00:24.260
thinking and to have enough
01:00:24.280 --> 01:00:24.981
of a knowledge base.
01:00:25.001 --> 01:00:25.280
You're like,
01:00:25.702 --> 01:00:28.947
oh, cool, an article on dinosaurs,
01:00:29.449 --> 01:00:31.211
and I know a bit about dinosaurs,
01:00:31.231 --> 01:00:32.375
so I can read up on this
01:00:32.414 --> 01:00:33.918
and now actually I can
01:00:33.958 --> 01:00:36.782
build this into my dinosaur schema.
01:00:36.822 --> 01:00:37.324
I love that.
01:00:38.692 --> 01:00:40.233
As we close this out, Steven,
01:00:40.253 --> 01:00:42.054
I just really appreciate
01:00:42.074 --> 01:00:44.657
you coming on and doing
01:00:44.677 --> 01:00:45.998
like a round two with us.
01:00:46.719 --> 01:00:47.659
Super thankful for that.
01:00:47.679 --> 01:00:49.300
I love nerding out with you.
01:00:49.340 --> 01:00:52.103
It's been great.
01:00:52.143 --> 01:00:53.425
So good.
01:00:53.525 --> 01:00:54.726
It's so good.
01:00:54.766 --> 01:00:56.987
So as you know, Steven,
01:00:57.809 --> 01:00:58.789
we do wrap up the show with
01:00:58.809 --> 01:01:01.532
this question of what's top of mind.
01:01:02.271 --> 01:01:03.793
And it's your second shot at it.
01:01:03.873 --> 01:01:04.512
So like,
01:01:04.592 --> 01:01:06.434
what is been a minute since you've
01:01:06.454 --> 01:01:06.873
been on?
01:01:07.713 --> 01:01:08.974
What is something right now
01:01:08.994 --> 01:01:10.554
that is resonating with you
01:01:10.594 --> 01:01:12.476
that is maybe keeping you up at night?
01:01:12.496 --> 01:01:12.916
What is that?
01:01:13.436 --> 01:01:14.916
What is under the hat for you right now?
01:01:15.878 --> 01:01:17.940
Sure, last time we were on,
01:01:17.960 --> 01:01:19.521
I think I said AI, which is still true,
01:01:19.681 --> 01:01:22.262
but I will add now, look, we're only what,
01:01:22.302 --> 01:01:24.262
like a few weeks since the
01:01:24.302 --> 01:01:25.583
National Assessment of
01:01:25.643 --> 01:01:26.682
Educational Progress results,
01:01:26.702 --> 01:01:27.704
the NAEP results came out
01:01:29.043 --> 01:01:29.864
and they were not great.
01:01:30.704 --> 01:01:31.505
And that's a little bit of
01:01:31.545 --> 01:01:32.385
an understatement.
01:01:33.246 --> 01:01:34.246
And particularly they were
01:01:34.286 --> 01:01:35.487
not great in like the worst
01:01:35.547 --> 01:01:37.007
way where like we're seeing
01:01:37.047 --> 01:01:39.889
like students who were doing like well,
01:01:40.728 --> 01:01:42.451
are doing fine and students
01:01:42.610 --> 01:01:43.711
and basically every our
01:01:43.931 --> 01:01:45.112
strongest students are
01:01:45.494 --> 01:01:46.393
doing okay and in some
01:01:46.434 --> 01:01:47.434
cases even growing a little
01:01:47.474 --> 01:01:48.697
bit but for the most part
01:01:48.737 --> 01:01:50.237
like everyone else like the
01:01:50.277 --> 01:01:53.300
gap is is widening and that
01:01:53.340 --> 01:01:55.322
for me is a national call to arms
01:01:56.402 --> 01:01:58.764
uh um we like we owe it to
01:01:58.804 --> 01:02:00.043
our kids to figure this out
01:02:00.164 --> 01:02:01.364
and to get it right and
01:02:01.403 --> 01:02:02.384
it's not because people
01:02:02.423 --> 01:02:03.324
aren't working hard because
01:02:03.364 --> 01:02:04.925
we are all working hard I
01:02:04.985 --> 01:02:05.864
remember all the talk about
01:02:05.885 --> 01:02:06.844
like learning acceleration
01:02:06.864 --> 01:02:07.505
I'm like I thought I was
01:02:07.525 --> 01:02:09.385
going as fast as I could um
01:02:09.425 --> 01:02:11.365
so you know right that was
01:02:11.425 --> 01:02:12.746
a strategy it was a hard
01:02:12.766 --> 01:02:13.445
thing to hear as an
01:02:13.505 --> 01:02:14.467
educator like where it's
01:02:14.487 --> 01:02:15.706
like of course I want this
01:02:15.726 --> 01:02:16.387
but it's not like I was
01:02:16.407 --> 01:02:17.047
like oh yeah we weren't
01:02:17.067 --> 01:02:17.907
really trying but now we're
01:02:17.927 --> 01:02:19.106
gonna try it's like oh
01:02:19.126 --> 01:02:21.608
we've been trying so like we need um
01:02:22.188 --> 01:02:23.489
We need strategies, right?
01:02:23.748 --> 01:02:24.548
If we're going to say kids
01:02:24.588 --> 01:02:26.630
are not reading as complex
01:02:26.670 --> 01:02:28.431
a text as they need to, I'm in.
01:02:28.811 --> 01:02:29.891
But what are the strategies
01:02:29.931 --> 01:02:30.992
I'm going to use to help
01:02:31.032 --> 01:02:32.552
kids make sense of those complex texts?
01:02:32.612 --> 01:02:33.492
You can't just say,
01:02:33.793 --> 01:02:34.432
you can't take me to the
01:02:34.472 --> 01:02:35.634
basketball court and say, Steve,
01:02:36.434 --> 01:02:37.855
we're going to raise the net two feet,
01:02:39.315 --> 01:02:40.175
and we want you to dunk,
01:02:40.295 --> 01:02:41.416
and we have no strategies
01:02:41.456 --> 01:02:42.436
for you to do that, right?
01:02:43.016 --> 01:02:43.938
That's a lot of what Love
01:02:43.958 --> 01:02:45.760
and Literacy was designed to do, say,
01:02:45.800 --> 01:02:46.121
great.
01:02:46.161 --> 01:02:46.762
Like this was,
01:02:47.123 --> 01:02:48.804
I'm with it for let's move faster.
01:02:48.965 --> 01:02:50.407
I'm with it for let's do better.
01:02:50.806 --> 01:02:51.889
I'm with it for we have this
01:02:51.989 --> 01:02:53.650
whole research base that we
01:02:53.670 --> 01:02:55.253
can be nerdy about and can
01:02:55.293 --> 01:02:56.313
apply to our teaching.
01:02:56.574 --> 01:02:58.215
And for too long was
01:02:58.275 --> 01:02:59.458
collecting dust on a shelf
01:02:59.538 --> 01:03:00.139
and it shouldn't have been.
01:03:00.338 --> 01:03:00.960
because it could have been
01:03:01.019 --> 01:03:02.181
put in service of our kids.
01:03:02.481 --> 01:03:03.581
So let's take that knowledge
01:03:04.081 --> 01:03:04.922
and use it to provide the
01:03:05.063 --> 01:03:06.204
best programs that we can,
01:03:06.244 --> 01:03:07.105
the most collaborative
01:03:07.144 --> 01:03:07.784
programs that we can,
01:03:07.844 --> 01:03:09.507
the most inspiring programs that we can.
01:03:09.867 --> 01:03:11.547
That's that's the world that
01:03:11.568 --> 01:03:12.429
we want to build for our
01:03:12.449 --> 01:03:14.311
kids and for ourselves.
01:03:14.391 --> 01:03:14.530
Right.
01:03:14.550 --> 01:03:15.351
We owe it to each other.
01:03:15.652 --> 01:03:17.432
So I've been thinking a lot
01:03:17.472 --> 01:03:18.434
about those results.
01:03:18.653 --> 01:03:21.277
And as I sort of a way to
01:03:21.697 --> 01:03:22.838
light a little bit of a fire,
01:03:24.018 --> 01:03:26.239
uh for you know what we can
01:03:26.300 --> 01:03:27.260
do next and what we can do
01:03:27.280 --> 01:03:28.242
in service of our kids and
01:03:28.282 --> 01:03:29.282
to me like the solution is
01:03:29.362 --> 01:03:30.463
not like we weren't working
01:03:30.503 --> 01:03:31.744
hard enough the solution is
01:03:31.764 --> 01:03:33.005
like we need the best
01:03:33.045 --> 01:03:34.865
possible tools uh so that
01:03:34.885 --> 01:03:35.726
we can use them in the best
01:03:35.786 --> 01:03:36.967
possible way because I
01:03:36.987 --> 01:03:37.867
don't know anyone who works
01:03:37.907 --> 01:03:39.648
as hard as as educators
01:03:39.688 --> 01:03:40.590
it's it's you know and I
01:03:40.610 --> 01:03:41.349
believe I believe there
01:03:41.389 --> 01:03:42.610
actually is is some
01:03:42.650 --> 01:03:43.231
research based on the
01:03:43.251 --> 01:03:44.172
number of decisions that an
01:03:44.231 --> 01:03:45.512
educator has to make in the
01:03:45.552 --> 01:03:46.733
course of a day it sounds
01:03:46.773 --> 01:03:49.275
phenomenal uh so the
01:03:49.315 --> 01:03:50.536
question is whether they're out there
01:03:50.976 --> 01:03:51.677
I think there's a note out
01:03:51.697 --> 01:03:52.478
there that says something
01:03:52.518 --> 01:03:53.719
about how an educator makes
01:03:53.780 --> 01:03:54.960
more decisions in a day
01:03:54.981 --> 01:03:56.983
than a neurosurgeon does.
01:03:58.105 --> 01:03:59.126
I've seen that meme.
01:03:59.146 --> 01:04:01.467
But I don't know if it's true.
01:04:01.748 --> 01:04:02.429
I don't know if it's true.
01:04:02.528 --> 01:04:02.628
Right.
01:04:02.748 --> 01:04:04.889
I only hesitated to cite it
01:04:04.909 --> 01:04:06.371
because I don't want to tell you that.
01:04:06.391 --> 01:04:07.072
And then we look it up.
01:04:07.092 --> 01:04:08.672
It's like footnote.
01:04:09.373 --> 01:04:11.594
My brother made that.
01:04:11.815 --> 01:04:14.436
And since our last
01:04:14.456 --> 01:04:15.597
conversation was on media literacy,
01:04:15.637 --> 01:04:17.480
I'd hate to simply cite a meme.
01:04:17.519 --> 01:04:19.460
But I can tell you that I
01:04:19.481 --> 01:04:20.262
visit a lot of schools.
01:04:20.561 --> 01:04:20.961
I'm lucky.
01:04:21.041 --> 01:04:21.922
I have a cool job that lets
01:04:21.943 --> 01:04:22.804
me visit a lot of schools,
01:04:22.844 --> 01:04:23.704
see a lot of teachers in action,
01:04:23.724 --> 01:04:24.385
talk to a lot of folks.
01:04:24.965 --> 01:04:26.686
And people just are just
01:04:27.027 --> 01:04:28.668
there is so much love and
01:04:28.768 --> 01:04:29.530
hard work and
01:04:29.570 --> 01:04:31.271
thoughtfulness that goes into teaching.
01:04:31.452 --> 01:04:33.614
And I don't think anyone would deny that.
01:04:33.773 --> 01:04:36.597
So to me, when I think about like what's,
01:04:36.978 --> 01:04:38.619
you know, top of mind right now,
01:04:38.818 --> 01:04:40.740
what's under the hat, it's just OK,
01:04:41.141 --> 01:04:41.802
we've like.
01:04:42.483 --> 01:04:44.264
we had we had a pandemic we
01:04:44.324 --> 01:04:45.364
have these nape results we
01:04:45.463 --> 01:04:46.885
knew we knew already that
01:04:46.945 --> 01:04:47.585
like I would have been
01:04:47.605 --> 01:04:48.465
surprised with the results
01:04:48.485 --> 01:04:50.025
for like everything's great
01:04:50.646 --> 01:04:52.527
um so if if we know this is
01:04:52.586 --> 01:04:53.427
the world that we're living
01:04:53.467 --> 01:04:54.208
in how do we meet this
01:04:54.268 --> 01:04:55.728
moment together uh and to
01:04:55.768 --> 01:04:57.668
me that's that's by sharing
01:04:57.748 --> 01:04:58.568
the best ideas that we come
01:04:58.628 --> 01:04:59.389
up with and listening to
01:04:59.449 --> 01:05:00.690
each other and learning
01:05:00.710 --> 01:05:01.331
from each other and
01:05:01.351 --> 01:05:02.451
learning from research and
01:05:02.670 --> 01:05:04.211
and just iterating again
01:05:04.231 --> 01:05:06.213
and again and again um in
01:05:06.253 --> 01:05:07.413
the service of the the
01:05:07.432 --> 01:05:08.393
families and the children
01:05:08.652 --> 01:05:09.954
uh that we all serve and that we all love
01:05:10.969 --> 01:05:11.670
Powerful message.
01:05:11.891 --> 01:05:13.532
Yeah, really appreciate that.
01:05:14.052 --> 01:05:17.375
And the data is supporting it, right?
01:05:17.695 --> 01:05:19.516
So let's go do something about it.
01:05:19.695 --> 01:05:19.936
Yeah.
01:05:20.456 --> 01:05:21.797
Steven, this was fun.
01:05:22.978 --> 01:05:23.858
You're always welcome.
01:05:23.898 --> 01:05:24.599
This is great.
01:05:24.699 --> 01:05:26.760
I feel like you have so much
01:05:26.880 --> 01:05:28.862
knowledge that we could do
01:05:28.902 --> 01:05:30.043
another couple episodes and
01:05:30.063 --> 01:05:31.704
they'd be very wildly
01:05:31.744 --> 01:05:33.385
different in the best possible way.
01:05:33.826 --> 01:05:34.887
So just really appreciate you.
01:05:35.748 --> 01:05:36.208
Oh, thanks.
01:05:36.327 --> 01:05:37.108
I love being here.
01:05:37.128 --> 01:05:37.849
You guys are great.
01:05:37.869 --> 01:05:38.889
It was a lot of fun to talk.
01:05:40.501 --> 01:05:41.302
Awesome.
01:05:41.603 --> 01:05:41.784
Awesome.
01:05:41.804 --> 01:05:42.346
All right, friends.
01:05:42.465 --> 01:05:44.670
Well, as always, keep your hats on,
01:05:44.711 --> 01:05:45.813
but your minds open.
01:05:47.117 --> 01:05:47.679
Until next time.