Shift Writing Into the Classroom, Part II, with Dr. Catlin Tucker

In this episode, Dr. Catlin Tucker joins us to discuss her book Shift Writing Into the Classroom with UDL and Blended Learning, a book she co-wrote with Dr. Katie Novak. Catlin shares insights into how to perform this shift and provides examples of how artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT fit into the equation. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Tucker outlines actionable strategies for teachers of all subject areas, making the point that we should all be teachers of writing. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#272 — Shift Writing Into the Classroom, with Dr. Catlin Tucker

41 min
AVID Open Access

Keywords

teachers, students, classroom, writing, thesis statement, kids, strategy, english teacher, support, grading, write, blended learning, station, thinking, ai, catlin, opportunities, idea, book, learning

Speakers

Dr. Catlin Tucker (66%), Rena (14%), Winston (12%), Paul (6%), Speaker 1 (1%), Transition (1%), Speaker 2 (0%)

Dr. Catlin Tucker  0:00  

Writing is so cognitively challenging and complex. Why wouldn't we be trying to pull it in the classroom and support that process with teacher support or peer support, and hopefully make the whole endeavor more rewarding for everyone.

Rena Clark  0:15  

The topic for today's podcast is Shift Writing into the Classroom with Dr. Catlin Tucker. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student to learn more about AVID visit their website at avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann  0:48  

I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin  0:50  

And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Speaker 1  0:53  

And we're here to share insights and actionable strategies. 

Transition Music  0:58  

Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark  1:03  

Today's quote comes from Dr. Catlin Tucker and Dr. Katie Novak. In their book, Shift Writing into the Classroom, they write: "With time, clarity, critique, and support, students are capable of much more than we imagine." I like that quote, y'all. What are we thinking?

Speaker 1  1:24  

Don't underestimate kids. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, you know, "Kids can be amazing, if we let them." And then this quote actually makes me want to modify it just a little bit. "Kids can be amazing if we let them and if we provide the right conditions for success." So, I really liked that about it.

Winston Benjamin  1:44  

For me, it's a belief. Kids don't really know how to believe in themselves. So, sometimes, I think having teachers show and demonstrate what it means and how it means to believe in themselves, care for themselves, challenge themselves, and push themselves to do better, I think this really emphasizes how that daily activity of supporting students are really important. 

Rena Clark  2:08  

Well, I'm hoping we'll get to talk more about this and how to provide those opportunities for students. We have back with us today Dr. Catlin Tucker. So, welcome back.

Dr. Catlin Tucker  2:19  

Thank you.

Transition Music  2:20  

Welcome back.

Dr. Catlin Tucker  2:21  

Thank you for having me. 

Rena Clark  2:23  

Lucky to have you again. And just a little background if you're a new listener about Catlin. Dr. Catlin Tucker is a best selling author, keynote speaker, international trainer, and professor in the Masters in the Art of Teaching program at Pepperdine University. She taught for 16 years in Sonoma County, where she was named Teacher of the Year in 2010. But we're really excited. We had the opportunity to talk with your co-writer. Today, you're going to be talking with you about your new book, Shift Writing into the Classroom With UDL and Blended Learning. So we are just excited to hear about some of your perspectives on the topic. So to get started, could you maybe share why you chose this particular topic for this book? 

Dr. Catlin Tucker  3:11  

Yeah, I woke up, and I tell this story in the introduction, but I remember very vividly the morning I woke up and I had like three text messages before 6:30 In the morning from random people, like an aunt, a friend, colleague, and it was all about ChatGPT. And I was getting out of bed and I had not heard of ChatGPT. I had no idea what it was. And I stumbled downstairs, like turn on my coffee machine, and I'm like doing searches on my phone, just to find out what these people are talking about. And the three first articles that came up had the most like hyperbolic titles. You know, "The High School Essay is Dead"--like authentic writing will never happen again. And I was just like, What is going on? So, I read a bit more about ChatGPT. I actually spent a chunk of that day--I was lucky enough to be at home--digging into it. And my response was very calm by comparison. I just had this moment where I thought, you know, if we keep sending writing prompts home with students after they've had a long day at school, these prompts most kids don't really care about, they don't resonate with students, then yeah, some students are gonna go home and they're gonna use a chatbot to generate writing so they can get done with it, right? Who among us does not sometimes take the shortest route from point A to point B? In my mind, it was like the problem isn't ChatGPT or technology. The problem is the way we approach teaching. It just does not make sense to be sending work--especially writing is so cognitively challenging and complex--to send that home with students to struggle with on their own. Not even to mention all of the equity or inequity kind of issues we need to be considering when we send that kind of work home with students. So, for me, I thought, we got to write about this. I knew the biggest hurdle we would face with this book is that so many teachers would just see the word writing in the title and be like, Oh, I'm a math teacher, this isn't for me. This is for all those English teachers--and kind of reminding educators that we are all teachers of writing, or we should be.

Paul Beckermann  5:21  

Let me just follow up on that.  So why? For all those teachers out there that are not English teachers like you and I, why should they? And what's what's the benefit of that?

Dr. Catlin Tucker  5:32  

Well, there is a lot of research around how when you write about something, it can improve your understanding of it, your retention of it. So it's like, when we write we kind of find our mental pathway through complex ideas and information. We make connections, we solidify understanding. So there are all of these academic benefits to writing. Writing is also a really wonderful way to provide these avenues in classrooms where students learn how to become better communicators, which have really wonderful implications for their relationships with other people, their ability to self-manage even in classrooms. So, I was recording a reel on Instagram, just talking about all of the amazing benefits that writing has, from the academic to the personal, that would be worth nurturing in classrooms, be it history, science, you know, world languages. It really shouldn't matter. We should be having students write. And when I work with, like, let's say, math teachers, there isn't a ton of writing in their curriculum, really kind of emphasizing what role that could play to help students really think through the steps they're taking, or the parts of a process, or how something that they're learning might relate to something they might encounter in their lives beyond the classroom.

Winston Benjamin  6:52  

I really appreciate that because for me, sometimes I've never felt qualified because my training was not in English, right? So how might your book benefit teachers who don't feel qualified or prepared to really lead students through the writing process because, again, we know that it's an important thing and the pressure to get it right.

Dr. Catlin Tucker  7:12  

Yeah, that is such a great point, and Katie and I talk about that in the book. If you're an English teacher, you might have gotten preparation around how do you embrace all parts of the writing process? How do you support students in this really cognitively challenging work? But if I'm a science teacher or math teacher, or I have a CTE credential in something, maybe I didn't really get that training. So what we wanted to do in the book was to make the parts of the writing process really accessible for teachers who might not have a firm foundation in it. And I actually meet English teachers, quite frankly, all the time, who are like, I feel like I can help kids read and dig into passages and that, but it's really hard for me to teach writing. So from the very beginning to the very end, we kind of break down in each chapter, a part of the writing process, and the goal is to help the teacher, regardless of the subject area, leverage a collection, just like there's learner variability, there's variability in what we're kind of drawn to, or how we want to work. And so we have a collection of strategies that are really designed for teachers to decide"How do I want to embrace this part of the writing process? We have templates, we have resources. So the idea is that, for those who don't feel they have a super strong foundation in teaching writing, that the book will not overload you in the theory and minutiae, which, you know, there's great books with lots of value that do that. But this is very much meant to be user-friendly. Like, let's hit the ground running with these strategies and these techniques, and here are templates and things you can use to do it.

Winston Benjamin  7:51  

I appreciate having the templates. And I know sometimes for me, it's like the "Why," yes, okay, good, there's things that I can use. But why should I try to make the writing in the classroom instead of giving extra homework because I know, repetition might be a valuable thing, but why not repetition? Why focus in on the classroom, as you say, shift the space.

Dr. Catlin Tucker  9:19  

I think this is a bigger conversation for me personally. I just don't feel like the way we use class time makes a lot of sense to me in this in this moment, right? Like I go in as a coach and I observe lots of teachers at work. And there is still a tremendous amount of time in a lot of the classrooms that I observe where teachers are planted at the front of the room. And a lot of that time is dedicated to transferring information, modeling a process, a strategy, a skill for the whole class, going back over that model probably three times because there's some kids who didn't get it and then releasing kids to some kind of practice and review. And so, my biggest issue is we're teaching in this moment where we're surrounded by technology, right? So many schools are one-to-one, or they have carts full of devices in classrooms, kids are carrying around computers in their pockets. And I don't understand why the lion's share of the class is spent talking at kids, basically, when the thing that technology does extremely well is information transfer. We can watch a video. We can listen to a podcast. We can interact with a simulation online. We can read a digital text. And when we engage with information in these ways, we have so much more control over it. We can expand text, we can look up words, we can slow down speeds, or turn on closed caption. There's so many ways in which to remove barriers using technology to transfer information. I wish teachers were spending their limited time with kids because when we ask teachers what's your biggest challenge? They're like, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do. I'm like, Well, why aren't we leaning on technology to do what it does well so that you can work with small groups of learners providing differentiated instruction, or differentiated modeling sessions. And teachers are like, "Yeah, but if I'm working with these kids over here, what are the rest of the kids doing?" And it's like, okay, well, maybe we give them meaningful prompts in the classroom for them to work through or collaborate around. Like, writing is such an important vehicle for learning, and yet so often, that writing just follows kids home. And you know, when they have access to... I mean, before ChatGPT or before AI, it was copying and pasting whatever they found online that seemed like it was answering questions, right, if they wanted to not do the writing themselves. So, to me, it's just like, if writing is so complex, why wouldn't we be trying to pull it in the classroom and support that process with teacher support or peer support, and hopefully make the whole endeavor more rewarding for everyone? Because when kids write at home, teachers are taking all that writing to their home, and they're doing the grading and writing assessments themselves. 

Rena Clark  12:24  

So I show you how to do writing, you're not actually doing writing. I was observing today, we were just talking about how to provide opportunities--baseball analogy--to give kids more at bats and practice, actually engaged in the writing. And I love that idea. If we did that in a staff meeting, just information transfer the whole time, that's when everyone complains. And we've changed that. That's now an email or video you can watch and we're going to spend that time together discussing and relationship in practice in doing. So, I see that being so beneficial. I appreciate your thoughts on that, Catlin Kalyn, and go ahead. Did you have something to add? 

Dr. Catlin Tucker  13:01  

Yeah, I was just gonna say for a tangible example, I remember, to your point that they need more at bats... I remember as an English teacher, you know, the thesis statement? Oh, my gosh, like, if the thesis statement is terrible, the whole thing can be terrible. And so it was just they need to write more thesis statements, then I can read essays. Do you know what I mean? Like if they just write a thesis statement every time I ask them to write an essay, it's really not enough. And I remember when I started flipping my instruction, and got really thoughtful about what am I going to present in a video because I'm gonna say it the same way for everybody, and it's probably something they're going to need to hear, like 8,000 times a school year, and what am I going to pull into small group differentiated direct instruction? And so thesis statement went into the video bucket, right? Like I said it kind of the same way for everybody and I said it a million times. Then things were more nuanced, like, you know, analyzing quotes or choosing strong textual evidence, I would pull that into small group teacher-led, differentiated station rotation experience. But what I realized is when I started making the videos for thesis statements, I said, okay, they need more practice. And I had a bit of time in class because I wasn't going through as much actual instruction because I was using video more frequently. I remember developing the thesis statement throwdown where, literally, every single day I would project a prompt. I would put students in groups of four. They would collaborate and write a thesis statement together. I would randomly throw two whiteboard markers on two sets of desks. And those two teams were part of the throwdown. So one was at the front board, one was at the back, I would play some ridiculous music while they wrote their thesis statement on the board so it was fun and not boring. And so while Abba is like blasting or something, I literally let them refine and put them up, and then we had a throwdown and I would go up to the board, and I would do like a Think-Aloud, editing it, pulling it apart, adding things to it. It was amazing how much better their thesis statements got because we were like playing and practicing and doing it in class and having conversations. And that's what I want to see more of. I want more class time dedicated to the practice piece of it so they get really refined in these skills, and they feel supported in that work.

Rena Clark  15:27  

And I think that kind of segues into something we've talked about a little bit in the book, but one worry teachers have about teaching writing is the grading workload. Because if I assign writing, especially if I'm a secondary teacher, now I have to grade as you said, all these things, maybe they get a chance to do a thesis statement every so often, because I have so much to grade. So how might we help alleviate that burden of grading?

Dr. Catlin Tucker  15:51  

I mean, we could have a whole conversation about grading if you want to be honest about it. But in the book, Katie and I have a chapter dedicated to self-assessment, and really engaging students in the process of thinking critically about their writing, and what does their writing tell them about themselves, right? Like one of our areas of focus is on cultivating expert learners and expert learners does not mean they're good at everything, but it does mean that they are motivated, they're resourceful, strategic, and they have a good sense of their strengths, their limitations, their areas of need. And so we want to engage them in regularly thinking critically about their own writing. How do they give each other meaningful feedback on their writing, so that it's not just the teacher always responsible for looking at student writing, though most teachers listening to this are probably like Catlin, kids are terrible at giving each other feedback. And it's like, they might not be very good to start. But are we trying to remove barriers in our design of how we facilitate peer feedback? are we supporting the process with scaffolds and models for them, and then in the grading piece of it, I don't want to pick I don't want teachers taking grading home. First of all, I wish they weren't grading everything, but I think that's still kind of happening in a lot of classrooms. It's like the carrot to make kids do stuff is I'm going to grade it and put it in the gradebook. But I would love if students are doing a piece of formal writing, I would like the grading to be a side-by-side assessment. You sit with me, I do a Think-Aloud, I grade what you've written with you here so you understand exactly what you did well, where are the gaps, what needs to be developed. All those pieces. So, we cover that in its own chapter about, you know, grading writing.

Paul Beckermann  17:42  

And that's so good because when you write the comments on the side and give it back to the student, they don't even look at them.

Dr. Catlin Tucker  17:50  

No, especially if it's the end, right? Like I always refer to this. Yeah, it's just autopsy feedback, right? Nobody's doing anything with this feedback. And I did it for years. I covered finished essays in comments and suggestions and corrections. But kids didn't take that and file it away, so that the next time they wrote an essay, they could revisit it and make sure they didn't repeat any of those mistakes. They were just like, Oh, cool. I got an 84%. Moving on.

Paul Beckermann  18:20  

What opened my eyes is when I graded with TurnItIn, and it has a built-in rubrics, but then you can see who actually even opened it to look at the comments. Oh, man, that was depressing. Yeah, that ended that.

Dr. Catlin Tucker  18:33  

Yeah, well, on one of the chapters in the book talks about using blended learning models to give real time feedback in the classroom, while kids are doing the actual writing. The goal being making it timely, focused, and actionable, but kind of breaking teachers of the habit of like, trying to fix everything or leave comments on every aspect of every assignment is tricky. But you can't do it if you're giving that feedback in the classroom. It has to be super focused.

Speaker 1  19:04  

For sure. Let's do just a little bit of a transition here to AI for a minute. What are what are your thoughts as to some of the best practices of using AI in the writing process?

Dr. Catlin Tucker  19:17  

So one of the things that we chose to do, because this book was very much inspired by all of the conversations, a lot of which were very fear-based around AI, is that in each of the chapters, along with the regular strategies we provide teachers to support whatever part of the writing process that they're focused on, we also have an AI-enhanced strategy. So the goal is for teachers who are open to it, or teachers who are in a district who allow it, is to really think about how we help students to start to understand how to lean on AI as a thought partner, as a few feedback tool, because for me, the idea that we could utilize AI for students to get feedback the entire time they're writing is incredible. But students don't know how to engineer a prompt, right? They don't know the questions to ask to truly understand what's going well in their writing, what's not going well. So we have this opportunity, from my perspective, to really teach students how to use this powerful tool they have at their disposal, with integrity, with responsibility, to help them improve as writers. And it's so important that before kids, like I worry if kids never find their voice as a writer, then it's really easy to just ask something like a ChatGPT to spit out a response to a prompt and be like, sure, this sounds good. As somebody who's authored many books, I write a blog every week, I use ChatGPT all the time to give me feedback. Like I'll throw a paragraph in and I'm like, Does this does this flow from this other sentence above? Or is there a part of this that could be developed more? I don't want to use this word twice. What other word could I substitute in here, right? So I'm like using it and sometimes, a lot of times, actually, it will spit out suggestions, and I'm like, "No, that doesn't sound like me." I like the way I wrote it better, or that's not my voice, or I don't identify with the way that's written. But I know my voice. I have already found my voice as a writer. And so, what Katie and I want to do is to help students, regardless of the subject areas they're most drawn to, find their voice in that subject area through writing.

Winston Benjamin  21:39  

You mentioned the word blended learning a few moments ago. And I really appreciated the idea of how to take classrooms and help students be a part of the practice. But you spoke about blended learning. How can blended learning be the vehicle to shift writing into the classrooms thinking about a math because I know sometimes in math, we have to write the response. So how can you use blended learning to be the vehicles to shift writing into the classroom, in those spaces, as well?

Dr. Catlin Tucker  22:11  

Yes, well, I don't know that it necessarily the subject actually makes the difference to me in terms of like everything Katie and I write about is really hard to do in a--if not impossible--in a whole group teacher-led lockstep lesson. Period. What blended learning models and strategies allow us to do is to be really thoughtful about how we present information, how we use our time in a classroom. And so the different models, whether it's station rotation, or whether we're flipping instruction, or we're using a playlist model, the goal is to allow students more control over kind of the pace of their progress, while also freeing the teacher to provide that targeted individual and small group support. And hopefully, writing is just one of the many learning activities that we kind of allow students, because if we think about writing, some students write very quickly and need very little support. For other students, it's so laborious, and they need so much support, so it's one of those things where, if we don't have blended learning, if we can't lean on these models to free the teacher to meet specific groups of learners' needs, or to provide learners with some time and space in the lesson to kind of engage in writing and kind of control the pace of their progress through that task, then, a lot of these things are really hard to do. But for me, ultimately, like whether it's science, or history, or math, the goal is to cultivate a more self-directed independent learner who's able to complete tasks on their own in the classroom while the teacher is over here working with these kids, or lending support over here, or giving feedback. So, I don't know that it matters to me what the class is. To me, it's a bigger issue of do we have instructional models that are flexible enough to free us to meet the specific needs of a group of students in a room?

Rena Clark  24:20  

I think sometimes, because I mostly work with elementary teachers, that they actually do this pretty well, especially in some of our primary grades. They have the stations, they're working with groups. And I just don't see that as much in secondary, for some reason. And so I'm just wondering, you've alluded to it a bit, but that ideal day of writing instruction, what might it look like in, for example, your classroom?

Dr. Catlin Tucker  24:46  

Yeah, so, I will echo your comment. That's absolutely what I see. The secondary--and I don't know if it's because we see ourselves as experts in our subject area, and so it's very tempting to like be at the front of the room and be that expert. It's scary to like let go of that control. I don't know all the reasons that contribute to it. But for elementary teachers often that station rotation is easier. They're more comfortable with it although then it's hilarious because I'll see a station rotation running so smoothly in a first grade classroom, then I'll work with like a 10th grade math teacher who's like, that would never work in my room. My kids couldn't do that. And I'm like, wait, I've seen first graders do this. If our kids can almost operate a vehicle, but they can't work at a small station on their own, like, we've got bigger issues we need to talk about. But to your question, which I'm deviating away from it. The original question, oh, writing instruction. You know, the thing I don't want people to hear me saying or think that they hear me saying is that like, now we have to have a whole class that is just focused on writing. Right? That's not what I'm saying. It could be like a Do Now write prompt. It could be you're in a math class, and there's a station, and I've given you a really messy, real world math problem from a website like Yummy Math. And your group's challenge is to talk about what steps would you move through to try to solve this really messy math problem. And then the last five minutes, I want you to write. Tell me in a couple sentences or a few sentences--how did you go about thinking you'd solve this problem? Right? So yes, you can have an entire lesson around writing. I absolutely did as a high school English teacher, right? So I would run a station rotation. And in one station over here, students would be self-pacing through a video on some aspect of the writing instruction, right? Like, how to start your essay with a hook strategy? Or how do you introduce and cite a quote? Or whatever the situation may be. Then at my station, I would be giving real-time feedback, and everybody at my station with me, would be writing. They would be continuing along the writing process, and I would be giving feedback on something they should have already finished, like the hook strategy, your thesis statement, or whatever. And then in another station, maybe they're like mining for quotes out of a book we've been reading. And so we have a big piece of butcher paper out and they're finding cool quotes about a topic, right? Like that was something that happened in my English class. But, regardless, if you're not an English teacher, maybe you do have station rotation, or you're using a playlist, and just one of the learning activities is, I want you to stop. And I want you to, like, make connections between these things in a paragraph. Or I want you to respond to this particular prompt, or I want you to reflect on X, Y, or Z and writing, and let them start doing that work in the classroom. Because right now, most of that is the homework, right? You spent your day here, and go home, and try to remember what we did and write something for me.

Rena Clark  27:56  

I just love that idea of just using it in other subjects, that whole speaking and listening. And then how am I communicating? Or even explaining my steps, that 21st century skill that we talk about when they go out. Like, how are you communicating your thoughts and your thinking, and have that opportunity? I appreciate that lens for our listeners.

Paul Beckermann  28:16  

We want our kids to think critically. There's not much more critical thinking activities that you can do than in your writing. I mean, that's at the peak. So, Catlin, here's a chance to talk about your book. So who should read this? And if they pick it up, what can they expect from the book? 

Dr. Catlin Tucker  28:37  

I think everybody should read this book. Because everybody is a teacher of writing on some level. And unless you've got that mastered, and you know, teachers are just really excited learners, most of us, right? And so, even if I know a bunch about something, I'm going to learn something new if I pick up a book, and that's really what Katie and I are hoping to do for people. But the book for anybody--well, if you haven't read one of our previous books, it kind of follows a similar format, where each chapter starts with some story or anecdote from one of our lives that's like kind of loosely related to, or we make a connection to, whatever the topic of the chapter is, just as a way to like connect with the audience. And then we have a research and reality section where we kind of talk about what we're doing now and why it's not really yielding the best results, and what we could be doing more effectively. So we don't bore people with research, but try to just provide some evidence for why we think this is valuable to consider doing it differently. And then we have a collection of strategies, very specific things teachers could choose to do with students to kind of shift writing into the classroom but also kind of take these ideas from our last book, The Shift to Student-Led, and integrate them. For example, we so often ask students do writing for a subject area, but they might not know what that type of writing in science or math or history or English looks like. And so getting them in a small group, giving them exemplars, and if you don't have exemplars, that's a great use of AI, right? So here's some exemplars, what are you noticing? What's making these pieces effective? Like, what do they have in common? And so, giving them opportunities to kind of lead the learning in the classroom, unpacking these examples, having conversations, working collaboratively to try to identify kind of success criteria. So for me, it's really like those strategies are designed to hopefully give everybody something they're excited to kind of try. And then the last strategy in each collection is that AI-enhanced strategy for teachers who are like, hey, AI is definitely not going anywhere. I want to figure out how to leverage it and how to help my students understand how to use it responsibly. And then we have a wrap-up, a reflect-and-discuss. So if you're working with a PLC, or you have a group of teachers you want to do a book study with, those are great for that. And then we have kind of an Apply activity. So, hopefully, you can kind of take what you're learning and try to do something with it.

Paul Beckermann  31:14  

That's a great summary. And I've read the book, and it's practical. So it's not like just pie in the sky. You're practitioners, and you're giving very practical strategies. So that's really cool. In fact, strategies fit right in our Toolkit, which is our next segment. 

Transition Music  31:30  

Check it out, check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what's in the toolkit? Check it out. 

Paul Beckermann  31:40  

All right. We're gonna hop in the toolkit here. Winston, what do you want to drop in the toolkit?

Winston Benjamin  31:45  

I'm gonna do a little bit of a cheat code and say, Shifting Writing into the Classroom by Dr. Novak and by Dr. Tucker. I think for me, it's important to know some of the things that people are talking about. And I think sometimes people have fear for stepping in and trying to do it. So just some of the ways to alleviate like, what are you really trying to do when you hear these words? What do they actually mean? Getting some foundation, I think is a really important starter. So, for those who are brand new, worried how to get it done in your class, worried about math or science--scientists write papers. So learning how to help the kids write papers is going to be an important thing.

Paul Beckermann  32:28  

Excellent. Rena.

Rena Clark  32:30  

I really think about opportunities. As we talked about this UDL choice boards, maybe with some must do-can do, but opportunities for us to really get extra "at bats." So having students have the opportunity to do writing in multiple subjects, and as we mentioned earlier, whether it's a thesis statement, or I'm just trying to share my strategy, or multiple strategies to solve a math problem, but having a chance to actually write it out, and share it with others, is so important. So, just more at bats.

Paul Beckermann  33:06  

I love that. I'm gonna say station rotation as a strategy, because I think it's kind of like a foundational strategy. It's sort of the setup where it gives you opportunities to do all these other things. I mean, you can do a station that's flipped. You can do a station that's got a playlist in it. You can do a station that gives you more teacher-student contact. You can do a collaboration. You can do individual...so many options within that framework that I just think that's a great foundational strategy for folks. Catlin, you get to join in the toolkit fun, too. What's one thing that you'd like to drop in there that maybe we haven't talked about yet?

Dr. Catlin Tucker  33:47  

So I agree that station rotation is such a great foundation, and I'm sure people will want something even flashier, but figuring out what you can communicate to students in some other form of media that's not you. There's so many barriers that exist in that whole group, teacher-led instructional session, and so often, when I work with teachers, they think there's like not a place for explicit, I'm saying that there's not a place for explicit teaching in blended learning. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm just saying, if you're going to provide explicit instruction, then wouldn't that be better done in small groups differentiated? And if something is, you're just going to say it the same way for everybody, embrace that video, or find a cool podcast, or find one of both and give kids an option because so many students, whether it's lack of vocabulary or background knowledge, or just the pace at which information is being presented or they're absent, right? They don't get it and then we end up wasting precious class time going over and over and over things. I feel like if we leaned on media more strategically, if we leaned on tech more strategically, we could make our lives so much easier.

Winston Benjamin  35:13  

I appreciate that. Because even your toolkit leaves me thinking. And now it's time for the next segment. One thing.

Transition Music  35:20  

It's time for that one thing. One thing. One thing. Time for that one thing. It's that one thing,

Winston Benjamin  35:33  

What's the one thing that you're walking away, still going around in your brain, trying to figure out? So I'm gonna start with Paul. What's your your one thing that you're still mixing with?

Paul Beckermann  35:45  

I'm hanging on the metaphors I heard today. I heard we need to give kids more "at bats." I totally love that. You know, we need to get kids more hands-on stuff, not teacher-led the whole time. Let's get the kids in charge. Let them do it. Let them drive the car. Because that's the other metaphor I heard. If our kids are driving cars, they can do this. They can do blended learning. And I really think it's a strategy that folks should embrace. 

Winston Benjamin  36:13  

Rena, what are you thinking?

Rena Clark  36:14  

I'm thinking a couple of things, even some of my own values around how do we have kids not just be consumers, but creators? And I love this idea that Catlin talks about, like, if it's just an information transfer, I'm just consuming. So we can do that in different ways. I mean, any kid out there, but my own kids, if I wanted them to learn how to ice skate, they weren't listening to me. So I go just watch a YouTube video before we go ice skating. And honestly, then when we got to the ice rink, I was able to have like a small one-on-one time to teach them and they were so much more open to it because I had them watch a YouTube video, kind of my own analogy. But I just think about, can we provide opportunities? And then what is it that we're doing? How are we providing opportunities for kids to be creators and try that on. And I'm going to add one more thing to the one thing. The amazing benefits of writing, which is one of the first things we talked about, and I just think about, we sometimes underestimate the power and the benefits of kids actually doing the writing. 

Paul Beckermann  37:18  

We should maybe rename the segment to "One More Thing." Seems the way it always goes.

Winston Benjamin  37:25  

I think for me, the idea that keeps sticking around for me is the idea of removing barriers for learners. Like, as you said, Catlin with the student's absence, we know that's a barrier, so how do we support them re-engaging in getting that information? And I think something else that's important in your conversation about this removing barriers is teachers be more efficient. Stop killing yourself. Like, that's the barrier to success. It's how much energy you have to do what you enjoy doing. Teaching. So I think that's a really important thing that we're mentioning. Catlin, what would you like to add in our last One Thing...and More?

Dr. Catlin Tucker  38:12  

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, I think for me, yeah, I got a couple things. I'm not the first person to break this rule in this episode, so I feel okay doing it. I think one of the things that's been so exciting that I'm thinking a lot about is that in my work for the last 15 years around blended learning, one of the biggest areas of pushback and resistance from teachers, even ones who are excited and interested, is this feeling of, I don't have the time to do that design work, to like whip up a station rotation or whip up a playlist, even though I see the value that you're talking about. I believe in it. And the thing that's exciting from my perspective about AI is the opportunity to design with a much higher level of intentionality using these different models in a fraction of the time. And how do we get teachers to really get excited about that and embrace that learning? And then the other thing that I think about a lot too, because whenever we talk about students leading the learning, and really driving the processes we've been talking about today is we have to set them up for that success, right? You don't just plop a strategy down, right? Like one of the strategies from our previous book, reciprocal teaching, is so incredible to use with all kinds of media. And yet, I've seen teachers try it once with kids and like kids don't get it. It doesn't work. I'm not doing that anymore. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you start by explaining why we're using this strategy and what the benefits are for students? Did you model it for them? Did you let them practice as a class with a big Fishbowl? Did you give them some feedback in the early stages and then gently release this over to students? Because that's what needs to happen when we're trying to develop independent learners. They still need us a lot in the beginning, but the beauty is eventually we get to release it, and then they can take over. And so really helping teachers remember not to skip those pivotal steps that they do when they're introducing students to any strategy or skill or process in their class. All of these skills to direct their learning are the same way.

Rena Clark  40:24  

Well, I have a lot to think about. And even just from this conversation, things I want to try on in the next few weeks. So I appreciate you being here with us today, Dr. Tucker. And I just want one more plug for that book. It's a great book. It's practical. And it really is great if you're looking for a book to do as a book study, it's a really great one, and it does connect with all content areas, but Shift Writing Into the Classroom. So thank you again for being here with us. 

Dr. Catlin Tucker  40:53  

Yeah, thank you guys for having me again.

Rena Clark  40:59  

Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin  41:02  

We invite you to visit us at AvidOpenAccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future ready learners.

Paul Beckermann  41:16  

We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education. 

Rena Clark  41:21  

And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin  41:24  

Thank you for all you do. 

Paul Beckermann  41:26  

You make a difference.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai