Inspiring Teachers and Reimagining Education, with Eric Anderson

In this episode, we are joined by Eric Anderson, a Licensed K-12 School Counselor and the Family and Community Engagement Coordinator at Stillwater Public Schools. Eric shares his district’s innovative approach to both summer school, which they call their Summer Success Program, and their unique grow your own teachers program which elevates students and introduces them to possible careers in the teaching profession.  Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#324 — Inspiring Teachers and Reimagining Education, with Eric Anderson

AVID Open Access
42 min

Keywords

student, teachers, called, educators, strategies, learning, avid, leader, work, teacher, stillwater, kids, summer, eric, part, unpacking, talk, education, story, reimagine

Speakers

Eric (77%), Winston (8%), Rena (7%), Paul (6%), Transition (1%)

Eric Anderson  0:00  

Each of our 330 scholars has what I call a vein of gold within them, and it's your job as the student leader to bring that vein of gold to the surface, meaning that they start to develop a self-perception that they are, indeed, a scholar.

Rena Clark  0:23  

The topic of today's podcast is Inspiring Teachers and Reimagining Education, with Eric Anderson. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes that we can raise the bar for education. 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  0:55  

I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin  0:57  

And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann  1:00  

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

Transition Music  1:05  

Education is our passport to the future. 

Rena Clark  1:08  

Now our quote for today is from Stillwater Area Public Schools. In an article about their Summer Success Program, they write: "Just because it's summer doesn't mean the learning has stopped!" All right, y'all, what do we think?

Winston Benjamin  1:26  

Oh, for me, it's a personal connection to this. So this summer, my family and I went to Jamaica, and we hung out with my nieces and nephews, werre the youngest I've never met ever in my life, which is so cool. But the greatest part about it is we got a chance to drive around and visit several different locations in Jamaica, including one called Route Holland Bamboo, which is a drive, a couple of miles stretch, where the slaves, as a rebellion, took the bamboo that they were supposed to grow and made an overpass, where it's like a half-moon circle on the road. And we had a conversation about that with my nieces. And it was so interesting that during the summer on vacation, they were willing to have a conversation about not only slavery, but slave rebellion. What does that mean? It's just ways that I, as a kid, if it was in school, they would have tuned out. But to show that it even mattered, my niece went back to school and she wrote, what did she do this summer? And that was part of her report about her summer. It was getting a chance to go through Jamaica and learning the history. So I think, like you said, just because it's a summer doesn't mean the learning has stopped. It may not be in the building, but there's still learning happening.

Paul Beckermann  2:40  

That's such a cool story, Winston, and you made a difference. You're part of that. Yeah, for me, I think of changing paradigms, right? Sometimes we get in this rut and we think things need to always be the same way that they've always been, but they don't. We can reimagine things. We can we can reinvent. Just because we've done it a certain way doesn't mean that that's the perfect way to do it. Let's take a fresh look. Let's keep doing what's going well, but let's reinvent what's not and see how we can become better. And you know what? That's exciting. That's kind of what keeps my motor running as an educator, too.

Rena Clark  3:18  

Yeah, we're constantly in a state of change, and I don't feel like you can be in education if you don't take that stance, that you're just going to keep learning forward. It's just constant. And I'm excited to have our guest here today, so we have with us, Eric Anderson, a licensed K–12 counselor from Stillwater, Minnesota. So welcome, Eric. We're so excited to have you.

Eric Anderson  3:43  

I'm pumped to be here. And before we get started, I just want to thank this team for allowing me to share the story of our Stillwater Area Public Schools Summer Success Program.

Rena Clark  3:54  

All right, and we're excited to hear more about it. And I guess, just to get started, can you just tell our listeners just a little bit more about yourself so they have that background knowledge.

Eric Anderson  4:05  

Absolutely, Rena. As you had said, my name is Eric Anderson. I'm a K–12 licensed school counselor. I currently serve as our district's, what's called Family and Community Engagement Coordinator. Just a little back story. Public education is a second career for me. I also have a degree in Hospitality and Tourism, and I worked in that industry for 10 years, and as a manager of a restaurant and inn, my passion was recruiting, hiring, and supporting the high school- and college-age staff that served as a large percentage of our workforce. So that led me to return to school to pursue my master's degree in school counseling. And actually I began working in Stillwater Area Public Schools during the 1998–1999 school year. So this fall is the 26th year that I've had the privilege of working with our students and their families, fellow staff in the community. So I have to say this, choosing public education is my second career was one of the best decisions that I've made in my life. And again, after more than a quarter of a century, I'm still zealously enthusiastic to come to work on most days. 

Rena Clark  5:27  

I love that. 

Eric Anderson  5:28  

And one of my goals is that that enthusiasm with my colleagues, with families, with our community, becomes a contagion. Because I think public education is a remarkable place and has the potential to be the great equalizer. And so yeah, love what I do. Just a little bit about my personal life too. I'm I'm a husband, and I'm the father of two amazing adult children. Their names are Charlie and Sonia. I'm a twin. I'm a twin brother, and I'm seven minutes older, which in twin world means I am the older brother. For those of you that aren't familiar with twin world, that's important.

Rena Clark  6:07  

My twins, my daughter is two minutes older, and you know it. 

Eric Anderson  6:10  

Yeah. I'm also kind of a self described philosopher of life and lover of silence, particularly when I'm not working. And then, finally, kind of a an unusual hobby that I have, I'm a forager, so in the spring, I spend a lot of time on county road beds, hunting for wild asparagus and morel mushrooms. And I also farm-raise shiitake mushrooms. 

Paul Beckermann  6:41  

Oh, my goodness. 

Eric Anderson  6:42  

That's Eric Anderson in a nutshell.

Rena Clark  6:45  

I love this. 

Winston Benjamin  6:46  

Mr. Anderson, I'm going to ask you questions about life with you, my counselor.

Eric Anderson  6:52  

One other thing that I think, as a counselor, and you know, just as a fellow educator in the space with all of you, too, I believe to maintain our longevity as educators, we have to be mindful about finding balance between our personal and professional lives. 

Winston Benjamin  7:07  

So true.

Rena Clark  7:08  

It's so important. And you've talked about, you know, you were in hospitality and transitioned into education, but then as a licensed counselor, and you've seen so many things happen. So, I think we're going to dig into part of your journey began when you were really asked to reimagine this idea of summer school and do things really differently. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Eric Anderson  7:30  

Absolutely. So this goes all the way back to the spring of 2015, and at that time, I was approached by our district administrative team and asked if I'd be interested in helping to lead our elementary summer school program. So to say that I was surprised and highly skeptical at that point would be an understatement, and my flash judgment was, I'm about to be voluntold and handed one of those other duties as assigned, you know, that many of us as educators are all too familiar with. So, I fortunately, as part of my professional practice, when I hear something that's totally unexpected, what I really try to do, and I'm not always successful at this, but I try to slow the process and my reaction down by incorporating a three-step process that I use. So here I am in my brain, and I'm believing I'm being voluntold to run our summer school program, but I was able to suspend judgment, remain curious, and then I asked that administrative team a whole bunch of what I call "tell me more" questions. And in the course of that dialogue, I was told that our team would be given autonomy to build the program on our terms. And that's something, as an educational veteran, that you rarely hear. And I believed the team when they said it. So at that point, I was sold. So, the next kind of step to all of that, then we held two days of professional development. I was pretty well relationally connected, so I got to bring in a lot of highly competent educators, and we spent time exploring the current reality of many of the students' perceptions of summer school. And so, teachers shared that, for some, it was perceived as a consequence of academic underachievement, something that was being quote "done to them," instead of being viewed as an opportunity. And then these educators who have a great sense of humor, the conversation kind of took a turn, and one of the teachers said, "Sometimes summer school can feel like broccoli on my son's plate." She goes, "I have a son in middle school. He hates broccoli and refuses to eat it. And if I plop another scoop on top of an already uneaten broccoli at the end of the meal, he's still not going to eat it." Another teacher hopped in and said, "Oh, I've got the solution to that. You put cheese sauce on it." And that teacher shot back and said, "If you put cheese sauce on it, the student's going to pick around the cheesy bits, and you're still going to have a big hunk of broccoli left. And finally, we had this wise sage, this veteran educator with grown children, and she said, "Folks, here's what you need to do. Throw all that broccoli into a smoothie, and our students won't even know they're eating it." We had a good laugh, but ultimately that became the approach to academic learning for Summer Success programming is: make the learning delicious.

Rena Clark  10:48  

I love that. 

Winston Benjamin  10:49  

Ooh, see, make it a smoothie. Write the imagining. Each one of those situations was an example of reimagining. So it could work. But as you discussed, trying to make it into that smoothie, could you talk about what the program looks like today as in this depth of it? Are you still doing the smoothie? Or have you given the kids broccoli?

Eric Anderson  11:15  

That's a trick question. No we have not gone back to their eating it. Before I do that, I want to share one more quick kind of piece. So that was the current reality, right? Broccoli on the plate. Then what we did was we gave the teachers in that space an AVID Essential Question. And that question was, visualize an idyllic learning environment, and tell us what it would look like. And so we used a couple of AVID strategies. They started with Pair-and-Share, and then we moved to a collaborative World Cafe learning strategy, and the teachers walked around the room and they synthesized their collective visualization into a mathematical equation. And here's what they said. They said, "Authentic relationships plus high student engagement plus vigorous instruction." And they use the word vigorous and not rigorous. And vigorous means it's also culturally and linguistically responsive. So authentic relationships plus high student engagement plus vigorous instruction equals limitless learning potential. And so then those two things make learning delicious, and then the mathematical equation have stayed true since 2015, in terms of that introductory part of teacher orientation as our professional development for Summer Success.

Rena Clark  12:52  

You were ahead of your time in 2015.

Eric Anderson  12:54  

They were. Yeah, to be able to draw that out from them. And so, I think the question I heard was, what does Summer Success look like today? Yeah, so a couple of things that we've added to the Summer Success programming since that first year, the first we refer to as a collaborative mini-coaching cycle, and that takes the form of job-embedded professional development. And the second is a Grow Your Own Educator program. And if I can, I'll start with the Collaborative Mini-Coaching Cycles. And because your question was about, what does it look like today? I'm going to use this summer as an example. This summer's collaborative mini-coaching cycles focused on AVID's Writing to Learn strategies. And there's a difference between writing to learn and learning to write. What writing to learn is it incorporates short, informal writing tasks that help students think through key concepts or ideas central to the learning with the safety of knowing they're not going to be harshly graded. So the idea is, we know our kids' brains are filled with this limitless potential, but sometimes, because of the way in which we grade student work, it can get in the way of getting that genius out onto the paper and into the universe. So the whole idea is to get students thinking into a journal or into a learning log using a low stakes process. And we're very specific about how this collaborative, mini-coaching cycle process works. So Summer Success teachers select strategies from what we call an "Activities" menu. So this year, our activities menu had five specific AVID WICOR strategies. We had Quickwrites, dialog journals, learning logs, something called K-W-L-A, which is, What do I know? What do I want to know? What I learned? And how will I apply what I learned? And then, finally, what we call a stop-and-jot strategy. Once they've been trained in that activities menu, then it becomes kind of an exercise in action research. So when Summer Success starts, teachers have the opportunity to pick strategies, try them out, and try them on. And while they're trying them out and trying them on. our AVID student leaders are videotaping the students' reaction. The focus is not on the educator, because that comes with all kinds of stuff. They can get in the way of just, you know, teachers doing their thing and not feeling pressure, but really focusing on the students' reactions. So once that videotape has occurred, then it's kind of sacred material. We don't take it from them. We give the student leader and the teacher the opportunity to unpack the video so they have this kind of private conversation about what went well, and where are we seeing areas of growth?

Paul Beckermann  16:25  

So the students that are actually being taught then are giving feedback to the teacher. 

Eric Anderson  16:32  

No, that's a that's an important clarification. What's happening is the teacher is trying out and trying on the lesson. The student leader, who we actually refer to them as colleagues, because they're they're paid employees, is videotaping, and then the student leader and the educator are unpacking the lesson together.

Paul Beckermann  16:55  

I see, so this is collaboration between these high school students and these licensed teachers. 

Eric Anderson  17:01  

Exactly right. 

Paul Beckermann  17:03  

Cool. 

Eric Anderson  17:04  

Yeah. And then there is one more step to this, which is really important, too. Our school district is very fortunate. We have a team of highly skilled, what we call instructional coaches, so after the student leader and the teacher have had that dialogue then, once a week, that grade level team and the student leaders that are with that grade level team meet with an instructional coach, and they take them through a cognitive coaching process, and they decide, "What do we want to responsibly adapt and try the activity again?" And then they go back to their classroom and try it in a different learning context. Because a lot of times what happens in professional development is we want these strategies, and if the strategies don't go according to plan right away, we're really quick to say, well, that strategy is no good. But this is really kind of applying more of a deeper, metacognitive approach to it. 

Rena Clark  18:05  

And it's all the research, because it's ongoing. So it sounds like they have multiple cycles. Is that true?

Eric Anderson  18:11  

That's absolutely correct. Yep, our program's short. It's three weeks. So they have three cycles, one per week. But the long-term goal is that our licensed educators are taking these strategies and using them in their classrooms in the fall.

Paul Beckermann  18:27  

Yeah, cool. So now, as you look back on this, you've had a number of years to iterate this and do things. What are the big successes that you have seen come from this? 

Eric Anderson  18:41  

So, with this particular collaborative mini-coaching cycle piece, several of the classrooms adopted the dialogue journal as their strategy, and initially, teacher would write up a prompt. You know, in the first couple of days of summer school, teacher would write a prompt, and the students would respond. And we were getting that first week kind of reports of students would write three or four sentences to the prompt. Then one of the teachers in one of our coaching sessions, and this is something that we hadn't thought of, said, "What if we use the relational efficacy that the student leaders have built with the kids. Student writes to the prompt. At the end of the day, the student leader responds to the student's writing, and then the student gets the opportunity to write again." And that completely changed the the paradigm of that particular strategy. By the end of the third week, when we met with them for the final time, both student leaders and teachers were saying, I had a kid that had two lines the first day, and they wrote a page and a half on the last day. So part of it was around the prompt, but part of it was also connecting to that student leader, right? And that's that first part of that equation, authentic relationships.

Rena Clark  20:12  

And then there's purpose. That's awesome. So we've talked a little bit about those coaching cycles, and then you mentioned also that you've integrated a Grow Your Own Teacher program into the work, as well. So could you talk just a little bit about the Grow Your Own Teacher program?

Eric Anderson  20:29  

100%. Just to provide a little data for context. So in the state of Minnesota, approximately 6% of our teacher workforce identify as the acronym is T-O-C-A-I-T, teachers of color or American Indian teachers. So 6% of our teaching staff are TOCAIT teachers, whereas approximately 37% of our students identify as BIPOC or American Indian. And so these facts illustrate we've got a major systemic inequity in access to excellent and diverse teachers, and there's mounting and clear educational evidence supporting both the academic and the social-emotional benefits for both educators and our children in having teachers that represent our student population. So in Stillwater, which is an outer ring, predominantly white, socioeconomically affluent school district, we may have a BIPOC student start with us in preschool, matriculate through the entire system without ever seeing themselves reflected racially or culturally. And what I find, as a school counselor, when that occurs, when I talk to BIPOC student leaders about becoming a teacher, it's not on their radar. They haven't had that role model that you know, that person that looked like them leading one of their classes as they matriculate through the system. 

Winston Benjamin  22:04  

They can't imagine what they don't see. 

Eric Anderson  22:06  

Yeah, that holds true. So what we were able to do in the state of Minnesota, we're very fortunate. We have it's called a categorical funding source. So we have a fairly large, categorical funding source that we don't have to arm wrestle with the district about general fund dollars. It's called Achievement and Integration Revenue. And so we use that revenue to create this, grow your own educator program. And there's several steps to it, and I'll walk you through it. The first is interested students complete a job application, and they participate in interviews for those available positions. So really, for any career pathway that a student is thinking about, that's part of that process, right? So it kind of has a universal application. Second thing we're able to do, so selected students are offered paid positions, and a typical student leader will earn between $1,200 and $1,400 if they participate in all of the programmatic components and they complete the same paperwork that any district employee would complete. They participate in the same onboarding process as other district staff, and when they join us that first professional development day, we refer to them as colleagues. That's a cultural shift, and it's really important for us. They're not student helpers, they're not sharpening pencils. They're co-leading lessons that they've been trained to co-lead with our student leaders. So after they're hired, then in June, they participate in two and a half days of professional development, and they walk alongside our licensed educators. After the two and a half days of professional development, we assign them to a grade level team, partially based on their preference and partially based on need of the entire program, and then they get to do six hours of curriculum writing, paid curriculum writing with that grade level team, and that's really fun. It's been really fun to listen to them, because they're like, who knew Mr. A, that writing a lesson was so difficult? That so much goes into teaching a class. So it kind of creates this sense of professional humility for our student leaders. So they do that, and then they participate in three weeks of our Summer Success programming, which includes participating in those mini-coaching cycles. And then finally, the cool part. So this year we had 25 of these student leaders, and you've got maybe six to eight that are, like, I'm still really kind of invested in this, and I want to do a deeper dive. When they come back to our high school, they're able to take what are called College in the Schools classes here in Minnesota. So one is called an Introduction to the Teaching Profession, and the second one is called Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms. And if they, which they do, successfully complete those two courses, a local community college called Century College gives them six credits toward their AS in Education.

Winston Benjamin  25:46  

I love that you are recognizing barriers, including the financial limitations, like, why would I want to do all of this work without getting compensated, right? Some of those are some of the limitations that students have. And how do you support your summer staff and students in the Grow Your Own program? Because, as you said, there's racially, culturally diverse experiences. What are some of the ways that you support not only that, but also the culturally responsive aspect of their learning?

Eric Anderson  26:17  

Well, one of the one of the good things is we're deeply rooted in the AVID strategies, which are culturally inclusive and culturally responsive. I think, in terms of supporting fellow staff, so we have an entire team. This year, it was myself, I had an administrator who had background in special education. I had two instructional coaches, and, you know, Winston, I don't know how you've experienced it, but I really believe in bringing that zealous enthusiasm to all of the places and spaces. So I, maybe during the three-week period, spend three hours in the office, you know, returning some calls or playing catch up, but we try to be--and we are--out at the carpool drop off. We are at the bus lanes. We're in the cafeteria. We have a physical education component, which is really, really interesting. It's called Action-Based Learning, and I would describe it as PhyEd on steroids, because what we do is we incorporate an academic component into the gym class for our kinesthetic learners. So it's not two separate things. It's not sit on your pockets for the first two hours, go run around and then come back and sit on your pockets. There's academic learning happening while kids are moving and shaking. And when we're in all those spaces and places, we sort of develop what I call insiders eyes. So teachers are talking to us. Student leaders are talking to us. One of the challenges that I give the student leaders during the professional development, I tell them, each of our--this year was 330 students--I say, each of our 330 scholars has what I call a vein of gold within them, and it's your job as the student leader to bring that vein of gold to the surface, meaning that they start to develop a self-perception that they are, indeed, a scholar. And so our student leaders lead a pre- and a post-self-perception survey, and a lot of times, what we get during the pre-survey is, "I hate math," which, when you unpack that, oftentimes it's math is a stretch for me, and I'm going to say I hate math to put on my suit of armor. I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to be humiliated. And at this point, I'm not willing to stretch. And the student leader's job is to bring that out. When you see a pre-post that starts with, "I hate math," and the post is "I successfully completed three-digit multiplication problems." Like, I know it's qualitative, but that to me, is, that's good stuff.

Winston Benjamin  29:11  

That's great data. 

Rena Clark  29:12  

I love it. 

Winston Benjamin  29:12  

That is great data.

Paul Beckermann  29:17  

So, I'm curious. So you've got that data, but I'm curious. What kind of feedback have you gotten from community or parents or whomever has been involved? On the students, participants, teachers, staff, whatever? What kind of feedback have you gotten about the program now that it's been going for a few years?

Eric Anderson  29:36  

Yeah, so, eight years ago, when we started, there were some kids that would get off the bus on day one and they'd be kind of like, "Awww." And we turned that into a call and response. So when a kid says, "Awww," we go "Some." 

Paul Beckermann  29:56  

That's amazing. I love that. 

Eric Anderson  30:00  

And now what happens is, I we have a lot of what I call frequent flyers, so like students may return to the program year in, year out, and we have very little. There's always some anticipatory anxiety, because there's a few things at play here. Students haven't been in school for almost five weeks when they come and join us. So that's number one. Number two, we have seven elementary schools in our district, so the majority of the kids are not coming to their home elementary, right? Third thing is, they're learning with an unfamiliar teacher. And then the fourth thing is, they're having that, I'll use the term metacognitive discussion in their own head about "Am I really capable of learning at high levels?" We spend a lot of time, we tour groups through the programming. So this year, I had a group of state legislatures that came through. I had your very own Gina Gamnis in AVID came, and I think that's how I got invited to the podcast. But we really take a lot of feedback from them. Parents, for the most part, give us very positive feedback, just about it's nice to see my child having fun learning again. And then one of the things that I really appreciate, we hear from the parents of our student leaders, and they talk about how mutually beneficial it's been for their child to come home and tell these detailed vignettes. You know, we teach them to maintain confidentiality and all of that, but really, what they're doing a lot of times at the dinner table is talking about these cool connections that they're making with kids. And parents report, I had one parent say. "It was almost like there was light coming out of my daughter when she was telling these stories. I could just see that her ability to connect with kids was filling her bucket and really helping her with her own identity and self-confidence and self-perception, and all of that." And I think there's a few others. I'd love to be able to tell you we now have 15 licensed educators that are back in the Stillwater system. It's not that cut and dry. What I tell kids is, teaching is leading. So regardless of the profession, we have a lot of young people say things like, I want to be a veterinarian. I want to be a pediatrician. I want to be a marine biologist. But if you like working with kids, and you think you'd like to be a leader in your profession, at some point you're going to be teaching others, even if it's an adult. So if you like working with kids, you want to be a leader, feel free to try it out, try it on. 

They could always come back like you did, right? Career changes. 

Hey, I think there's something to be said for working in a second profession for a while. Public education is interesting. It's the only profession I'm aware of that we're socialized into. So we spend 13 years doing it the old way. And then, now that I'm an educational leader, and I work a lot with adults and stuff, and you talk about educational reform, sometimes you get looked at like you have three heads, because the system worked really well for many of the teachers that matriculated through the system, and they're still doing amazing work. I want to be very clear, but the sense of urgency, perhaps, isn't quite as intense, but going off and being a restaurant manager and all of that, it gave me a completely different kind of frame when I walked in. I wasn't as sort of locked into the traditional row and column thinking.

Winston Benjamin  33:56  

So it's time for one of our favorite questions. What's in your toolkit? 

Transition Music  34:01  

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. 

Winston Benjamin  34:13  

Thanks. I just love the tune in between. 

Eric Anderson  34:20  

Thank you. I'll be here all week. 

Winston Benjamin  34:23  

So Paul, Rena, and Eric what's something that you're walking away with, thinking about in your toolkit? Rena?

Rena Clark  34:32  

I just really want to think about mentorship. And Eric talked about the Grow Your Own program. But mentorship can be integrated in lots of different ways, different components. There can be a more traditional, like internship style, but there can also be opportunities just for mentorship so that they can bring that vein of gold to the surface.

Paul Beckermann  34:56  

And I think back to how your program began, Eric, and you had that conversation with the administrator and the trust that was underlying that offer given to you. You know, when we trust our educators to really do what's right for kids, oh, my, the amazing things that can happen in our schools. I think we need to trust the professionalism of our teachers and let them be great. Let that vein of gold in them shine through, too. And I think your program is bringing that forward. That's cool. 

Winston Benjamin  35:28  

Absolutely. One thing that I'm taking in my toolkit is shifting from rigorous to vigorous, because rigorous is a focus in on what students are doing and how much they're doing, but if we think about vigorous, it's both what is the teacher and the students doing together to create the best educational experience and the best place for learning. So I think that, for me, that's a shift and a place I want to put my toolkit. Eric, is there anything else you want to drop in our toolkit? Because you've been dropping them all day.

Eric Anderson  36:01  

Again, for those that have experience with the Writing to Learn strategy, they can speak truth and please talk to your colleagues. For those that aren't as familiar with it, dig into that. I just love the idea of kids have all this amazing intellectual capacity, and let's get it out in the universe. And so this informal approach to writing just took the pressure off. And then when you add in that relational component, that was a big win for me. That was all done by our instructional coaches. I wasn't even familiar with the strategy, and they said trust us on this one. And man, it was like professional and psychological oxygen to walk into those classrooms and see those kids just cranking it out on a dialogue journal.

Paul Beckermann  36:54  

Cool. Love that. All right. Well, let's hop into our one thing. 

Transition Music  36:59  

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

Paul Beckermann  37:10  

All right, one thing time, everybody. Winston, what do you got?

Winston Benjamin  37:15  

For me, it's listening to Eric's story about that offer. I have definitely been responded to a trusting admin giving me a role, or asking me if I want to do a role and go into voluntold. I really appreciate your point of slowing down the decision-making process, really go into asking questions, really taking the time to listen without judgment. So I think that was something that I'm going to take away as an important one thing. 

Paul Beckermann  37:45  

Rena?

Rena Clark  37:47  

I just love the whole idea of the smoothie and making the learning delicious. It's not necessarily changing the rigor or what the learning outcomes are, but it's all about the way that we present it, and making it delicious and appealing and something that is going to be palatable for the students that are in front of us.

Paul Beckermann  38:12  

Yeah, there's been, like, a whole palette of analogies and metaphors going on here. And I was thinking, Winston, when you said you were going rigorous to vigorous. I was thinking, if you do that really well, are you victorious?

Winston Benjamin  38:29  

By Paul.

Paul Beckermann  38:31  

Because we all want to be victorious, for sure. No, I just really love this connection that you're developing with these student leaders and how they're collaborating with the teachers. What a wonderful relationship that that's developing. And you're making your teachers better because of that connection with the students, and you're lifting those students up to a whole other level, too, because it's such a symbiotic, beneficial thing. I just love it. 

Rena Clark  39:00  

All right, Eric, one thing to add?

Eric Anderson  39:02  

I would share, I want to again talk about the importance of authentic relationships. And since we're doing a podcast here, I'm going to tell you just a very quick story, I promise. I think in stories and metaphors, and I sort of operate that way, but five years ago, we were doing a podcast camp with a group of female East African scholars, and before they got into their individual podcasts, I said to them, "What does story itself mean to you? I want you to write a narrative about what story itself means to you." And I'm going to share the quote. I've got it committed to memory. But the reason I say it's important, a lot of times, when we're talking about standardized tests, we're talking about quantitative data, but there is story. It's the qual and the quan. There's a story--a student, story, a family story, a community story-- that is partially driving that quantitative data. So if we don't look at the qualitative, if we don't move to a data-informed approach that incorporates the story, we're coming up short. And given this time in our society with all the acrimony and discord and polarization, this group of young East African female scholars, this is what they said when I said, Write about, give me a narrative about story. They said, "Our stories provide meaning for our lives and can inspire us to think more deeply about how we fit into the world and about the responsibilities we have to each other." And they capitalize the last three words. And when I think about a school district, there's all these layers. And is it truly our district? Is it the district? Are we engaging in petty feuds and not centering the students and families that we purport to serve? So I think those scholars now are, gosh, 24 or 25 years old, and off being difference makers in our in our world. And I promised them when they wrote that, that I would carry that forward in any professional context that I'm a part of. So thank you for letting me share it.

Their podcast team was called broad spectrum.

Rena Clark  41:40  

Love it. Thank you for sharing so much information and knowledge with us. We appreciate you being here, and we believe that you're "awe" some, so thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin  42:00  

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  42:15  

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

Rena Clark  42:19  

And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin  42:22  

Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann  42:24  

You make a difference. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai