[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program my good friend, Dr. Barbara Blackburn. Dr. Blackburn is the author of 29 books and a full-time consultant who works with schools around the world to help raise the level of rigor and motivation for professional educators and students alike. And she's the author of the new book, Rigor in the Remote Learning Classroom, Instructional Tips and Strategies.
[00:40] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:43] SPEAKER_01:
Barbara, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.
[00:44] SPEAKER_00:
Oh, thank you, Justin. You know I always enjoy coming and talking with you.
[00:48] SPEAKER_01:
Well, you are far and away my number one guest. And as a prolific author, I appreciate the way that you quickly address the evolving and emerging needs of the profession. And I think especially when it comes to remote learning, which so many students have been experiencing this year and so many educators have been putting tremendous effort into, but also experiencing a great deal of frustration around. I think it's fabulous that you have put together rigor in the remote learning classroom. So let's start, if we could, by having you tell us a little bit about what you saw working and what challenges you saw and struggles you saw educators dealing with that prompted you to write this book.
[01:30] SPEAKER_00:
You know, I saw a couple of things. One, I had some workshops scheduled that were very quickly canceled. But many of those places were trying to figure out how do we still focus on improving learning even in the midst of everything we have going on. And I was able to shift with that with several different places. And what I found was that teachers were very frustrated. Even teachers who were really good with technology, what they were frustrated with was how do we take what we know works, but do it in this entirely new setting, whether that was hybrid or totally remote, which early on was totally remote.
[02:12]
And many of the teachers I talked with said, we feel like we just have to start over. And that was very frustrating and it wasn't working. And so, you know, they're trying to do that instructionally. Meanwhile, they're trying just to learn whatever technology they're using, which sometimes was new, sometimes wasn't. They're trying to figure out how to get the kids to do their work, to continue to be motivated, how to connect with parents. I mean, it was just this massive, uh, challenge.
[02:43]
And, um, What I wanted to do, I knew I couldn't address all those challenges, but what I wanted to do was try to make things easier. It was never going to be easy. I was hoping for easier in some instructional ways. And the premise that I worked from was you don't have to throw out everything you're doing. Take what you're doing as a good teacher and adapt it to the remote learning setting. So if you want your students to do debates, keep doing debates.
[03:20]
But here's how you can do it. Here are some apps and platforms that will let you do it. If you normally would provide reminders on a bulletin board or on the wall, then here's how you do that as a tip sheet and post it online so that they still have access to those things. You can't physically coach a student, but you can coach them virtually. So the whole premise is let's figure out how to make what works work in an alternate setting.
[03:56] SPEAKER_01:
Absolutely. And I think that flexibility and that adaptability is so key to the successes that we have had since the pandemic began, since remote teaching began in virtually every place around the country. Barbara, what do you say to perhaps the thought that a lot of people might have that rigor is not really even appropriate anymore? in times when students are learning under suboptimal conditions. We may not have their full attention. They may have other things going on at home.
[04:25]
They may have very limited access to the kinds of supports that they would normally have in school. I've seen a lot of sentiments among educators that we basically should just cut everybody slack. We should cut ourselves slack. We should cut students slack. We should cut parents slack. How does rigor play into that?
[04:43]
Is rigor appropriate? And if so, how does that work?
[04:46] SPEAKER_00:
Well, you know, as you were listing all of those challenges, what I was thinking was all of those challenges happen in school. There are students in my classroom who don't have support at home. There are students whose parents I'm not able to connect with because they're working two jobs. There are students who are struggling. with motivation. There are students who are concerned about home issues.
[05:13]
All of those things happen in school too. They are magnified in a remote learning setting. But I don't think that's a reason to ignore rigor. In fact, what I would tell you is rigor is even more important because if students are not challenged, they become less motivated. So they know when they're just doing busy work. And I certainly have seen some of that.
[05:40]
I've seen some of that with my niece who is pretty much doing all busy work and she's not engaged at all. She'll log on, do what she's got to do as quickly as she can, get off and that's it. And I think when we provide rigorous activities that are engaging and motivating, then we can do it. The critical piece that is even more important in remote learning is the support and scaffolding. So I talk with teachers all the time about, you know, if students are struggling with rigor, up the level of support. With remote learning, you've almost got to assume they need extra support.
[06:20]
And that's as simple as the directions need to be even clearer. You can't assume that a student's going to ask you questions because they may not. So if you're going to verbally give directions, where are you going to give them in writing? Where are you going to build? And, you know, I'm very, you know, I don't care what platform you're using. I don't care what apps you're using.
[06:41]
I'm very, you know, I don't care whatever you want to use. But whatever you are using, where is your go-to spot for students? Where is your help desk? Where is your I don't know what to do section? so that they can go there all the time and get help. And, you know, I find that's even as simple as, and I talk a lot about tip sheets, but you can do short videos, you know, whatever works for your kids.
[07:13]
But even things like on a tip sheet saying, here's what to do when you don't know what to do and giving them steps to follow. One of my favorite videos that that I think is really important for teachers to post in that kind of section. And I actually saw the need for this. My best friend's son is in second grade and he was really struggling because, you know, one of the things we didn't think about with primary kids is. They don't necessarily know how to use a keyboard. So that's a whole different challenge.
[07:47]
But when he would get really frustrated, his mom would say, how can I help? You know, what can I do? And one day he was very upset and he looked at her and said, I don't want you to help me. I want to know what Ms. Wilson would say. And so Abigail contacted her and the teacher did.
[08:05]
about a three minute video. She posted it up for all the kids and it was just encouragement. You know what? If you feel like you're stuck, I know you can do it. And you know, if you need to send me a message, you know, your mom can do that or you can do that, but I want you to know I'm still here. And more than anything else, I know you can do this.
[08:24]
I want you to take a deep breath and I want you to get up from the computer and walk around your house. And then I want you to come back and I want you to start again. And those kinds of things are going to allow students to work at rigorous levels. But if we don't do those things, then you can hang it up.
[08:42] SPEAKER_01:
Well, say more, Barbara, if you would, about the tip sheet idea, because that's a new one for me. And that sounds like something that as a parent, I would love to have or love for my student to have. So how are teachers using tip sheets?
[08:55] SPEAKER_00:
Well, you know, it's funny because I recommend the tip sheets not just for teachers. So let's talk about it for teachers and then let's talk about it for parents. And I actually the reason I say that is a friend of mine, he and his wife, their middle schooler was struggling. And I said, let me tell you about tip sheets. And they were so excited. They worked on them over the weekend.
[09:13]
So I want to talk about both teachers and parents. So with teachers, I think there's two types. One is just a general tip sheet and that can be used for parents. It can be used for kids. So it's things like try 100 percent of the time. If you need a break, get up and walk around.
[09:32]
You know, if your brain freezes up, that's OK. Go get a snack and come back. uh with little ones it's things like if you're starting to wiggle that means you have wiggle arms so stand up shake and then sit down and start again and so you can word it for the kids you can also word one for the parents so i think general tip sheets are really good the other thing though is i think that topical tip sheets are important and these tend to be very specific So, for example, in a math classroom, it might be tips on how to solve problems. So if they're doing problem solving, it may be some general tips to follow. It might be one with word problems to be as simple as skim the problem first. Now write down what you know.
[10:23]
Next, write down what the question is. What is missing? And they do all of those things before they solve the problem. And those are all the things a teacher would say in the classroom. We're just going to put them on a tip sheet. Or again, it can be a video because some people prefer the video.
[10:37]
Some kids prefer it. It might be a really important one is how to read online because a lot of kids don't know how to read on the screen. And so that's different. how to participate in Zoom or whatever your other video thing is. They don't always know. They don't know how to raise their hand.
[10:58]
They don't know how to mute themselves. You know, those things are important. So you have specific tip sheets that help with whatever is going on. And those tend to be ongoing. Now, my friend Chad, his son Charlie, was particularly struggling in math. and was working on geometry.
[11:21]
They were working on angles. And he got stuck in a problem. And what he forgot was that the base was 180 degrees in terms of the line was at the 180 degrees. And Chad said, you know, he really started struggling. And then that threw him off. He couldn't figure out anything else about the angles because that didn't make any sense to him.
[11:43]
And he said, once we sat down and we talked about that, he said everything else kicked in for him because he knew that if that was true, then he knew, you know, this and this and this. And he said, but, you know, I'm working. My wife's working. We can't always be there for him. And I said, well, what if you make a tip sheet? And I said, what if you sit down with Charlie?
[12:06]
And ask him what are the main things the teacher says that he needs to remember. And write them down on a tip sheet for him. You know, if you want to put them in a folder. And they did that over the weekend. And he said there were a couple of things that Charlie needed to contact the teacher for. But he said, you know, those are really helpful.
[12:24]
And he said, we can do those at night when we're home with him. And then he can use them the next day when we're at work. And so I love tip sheets. And again, they can be sheets or they can be videos.
[12:36] SPEAKER_01:
Well, that something you said there prompted me to think about just a minute ago, Barbara, you were talking about helping students with Zoom using tip sheets. And I wanted to ask about the engagement aspect of any kind of online teaching, because one of the things that I'm hearing from educators everywhere is just that they're not getting anything back from their students. You know, the students might be logged in online. but their camera's off. And perhaps we've decided to give them that option. But we want students to engage.
[13:06]
We want them to answer questions. We want them to participate in discussions. We want to at least see their heads nodding if they understand. And that lack of feedback has been just extremely difficult for so many teachers, just not really knowing what their students are thinking. What are some ideas for educators who want to just get more out of their students in the way of feedback and participation?
[13:29] SPEAKER_00:
Well, I'm going to talk about it in two ways. I'm going to talk about it during some kind of video session and then separate from that. First, if you want to allow your students not to turn on the video, I'm a big supporter of that. And I am because I heard a parent talking to me. Her daughter did not want to turn on the video. And the teacher just assumed it was because she wanted to do other things.
[13:56]
She wanted to play a game at the same time. She didn't want to be engaged. Well, the issue was that she really lived in poverty. And she had seen where her classmates, what their backgrounds looked like. And she was embarrassed for them to see her house. And so I really believe in honoring for whatever reason.
[14:18]
You're going to have some people who want to do it because they're going to play Nintendo at the same time. So I'm going to honor that because there are some people who really need it. So when I am doing video presentations... First of all, you just got to let go of the idea that you're going to see everybody.
[14:37]
I mean, when I do stuff all the time, I can't see people. I can't see you. And so what I have to do is look at my camera and pretend like I can see you. And if I can't, I try to come up with another alternative. It's funny. I have a...
[14:56]
I have a stuffed Snoopy, you know, from Peanuts. And I have it because for years when I was growing up, my dad and I always watched all the Charlie Brown stuff and Snoopy was our favorite character. And he died about a year ago. And I have that up here in my office as a reminder. And so I was doing one session and I had probably 150 teachers and I knew I wasn't going to be able to see them. So I propped Snoopy up on a shelf up above me and I talked to Snoopy.
[15:26]
And you know what? It helped. It just did. You got to figure out what works. But you do sometimes have to let go of the fact that you're going to be able to see them. That means you're not going to be perfect.
[15:36]
You're not going to be able to respond as well. But that's okay right now. The other thing I do... is use whatever engagement tools I can.
[15:47]
If there are polls, then I'm going to do polls a lot. You know, I'm going to put those in, you know, every six or seven minutes. So I'm getting some really quick feedback. If they can do thumbs up and thumbs down, you know, I'm going to do that. If they can raise their hand, I'm going to do that. One tool.
[16:06]
Oh, I'm going to use the chat. Oh, my gosh. I'm going to use the chat, particularly with older students. And I'm going to I'm going to give them a chat question. Now, we'll say this. If I've got the capability of my platform, I put all my questions up so they can see them.
[16:19]
So they hear them, but they also see them and it stays up there so they know what they're doing. So I'm going to use chat. But the other tool I really like, if your district allows it, I like breakout rooms. For example, Zoom has breakout rooms. And when I'm doing teachers, I can break them out by subject area so that I can introduce a strategy and they can go in the math one or the science one and they can actually apply that strategy in their subject area. So with students, you can randomly assign them or you can do the assignments.
[16:54]
Now, let me say this, because I hit this concern with the school district. They took a hard line against breakout rooms because they said teachers need to be able to monitor students continuously. And if they're in four breakout rooms, you can't be seeing all of that at one time. You need to...
[17:15]
have to be, you know, one room at a time. And so that's a challenge. You know, I can't tell you why they did that unless it's just they were afraid people were going to do bad things in the breakout rooms, but they took a hard line there. So I'm going to do all of those kinds of things in my video presentation, whatever my platform allows. But I am going to really bank on the engagement coming in other ways. Because I can't make them engage in that time.
[17:46]
I probably can't make them do it anytime. But I'm going to craft learning experiences that require engagement. So let's say that they're going to read a story or I'm going to read a story to them, you know, on the video. And then I want them to answer five questions. Well, so they get a worksheet or they get something where they're typing their answers in. OK, that's very minimal engagement.
[18:14]
What I'm going to do is ratchet that up by putting them with a partner and they have to actually work with their partner. And I'm going to put them using shared documents. So they have to work with their partners on this. Or for engagement, if I know that the writing isn't going to be good, let's say I've got first graders, you know, and that's just not going to work. What I'm going to do for them is I'm going to use maybe Flipgrid where they have to share their response to my questions. And then once all that happens the next day, everybody has to film a Flipgrid video responding to one of the others.
[18:52]
I assign them another one and they have to respond to it. So I'm going to ratchet up the rigor that way. One more. Let me let me do a high school one since we haven't done that. This is a social studies one. A great activity.
[19:07]
Let's say that we're studying World War Two. And I want them to do something that's an analysis, a comparison of different perspectives. So instead, I'm going to put students in groups. In this case, I'm going to put them in groups of four. I'm going to let them either use a breakout room if I'm allowed to do that. Or I'm going to use a shared document or I'm going to have them do videos that they have to go back and forth with.
[19:37]
OK, so here's what the assignment is going to be. OK, keep in mind, we're doing World War Two. We're exploring different perspectives. So I want you to think about how rigorous this is compared to that. They're going to be at a dinner party. Each one's going to be a different person.
[19:53]
Stalin, Truman, Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt. using the knowledge of the Yalta, Potsdam, and Tehran conferences in the 1940s, which I've taught, then they're going to write a script, which they can do on a shared document, of what each of those people would say about what the world would look like after World War II. Then after they've looked at that shared script, they each take on a character and they video their responses. Now, think about what I've done. I've structured that tremendously. I'm building on what I've already taught.
[20:30]
I've probably got a tip sheet of how to do the shared script, how to do the videos. And then we're going to post those and I'm going to be able to give feedback on those. The level of engagement of that is so much higher than write an essay. Does all that make sense, Justin? I know I just threw a lot at you.
[20:49] SPEAKER_01:
Oh, absolutely. And I love the connection between engagement and interaction and a topic that you also address in the book, which I think this is a good segue to, which is formative assessment. So let's go there if we could. Talk to me a little bit about how all this plays into formative assessment, because I think a lot of teachers' frustration is not just that they're not seeing the smiles on kids' faces or the nods of understanding, but that they're actually...
[21:16]
unaware of where students are in their thinking and understanding. So how do we use these engagement strategies to really get a sense of where our students are and what they need from us to master the content?
[21:27] SPEAKER_00:
Well, again, what I'm going to say is that remote learning magnifies the importance of everything that we know is critical, formative assessment being one of them. And when you can't physically look at a student and see that light of understanding or the confusion, then you've got to find other ways to do it. And what that can be, I will say that if it's manageable, if you can do some small group kinds of video conferences where maybe you can see them, Or somebody who doesn't want you to see the background or doesn't want the other kids to see the background, maybe do an individual conference. I think there's some ways, you know, to make that work, but that can be very wielding. So what I do is give other options and there are options that, you know, I would use anywhere.
[22:19]
For example, I like four corners in the classroom. If you've done a multiple choice question, if you think it's A, go to the front corner, B, go to the back corner. Now we're going to go C up to the front left corner. You know, I use four corners. Well, if you can use breakout rooms, you do that. And then they talk about their answer.
[22:36]
Then you come back together and you give them the chance to change rooms if they want to. So I can do four corners because I can see who's changing rooms, who's going to different one. I can have access to those chats that they're typing. So that's one that I use anyway. Sketch it out is a good one. So it's good, particularly for primary students, but sometimes I do it with older students and they do exactly that.
[23:01]
They sketch out their answer and it's just a change and they can, you know, scan it, give it to you, those kinds of things. But there's also apps like YouDoodle and KidsDoodle. So they can sketch it on that. I like exit slips. I mean, those are just, gosh, everybody uses exit slips. But the problem is, how do you do exit slips when you're using technology?
[23:29]
And so you can do them simply with the chat if you're doing a video. But there are also programs. that do electronic exit slips. Google Forms does it, Plickers, Get It, Padlet. Now they're getting ready to charge fee if they haven't already started. So I like free things.
[23:50]
Leno, Recap. So there's all kinds of good things to do that with. So you can do your exit slips and you can do a couple of different kinds of exit slips. You can do what they know. So that's what did you learn today? Or you can do, how do you feel about your learning?
[24:11]
So that's things like green is I'm ready to go to the next lesson. Yellow is I still have some questions and red is I'm really stuck. So you can do those kinds of things. There's also just tons if you want to look at other online platforms. And again, the thing is, if you're using something like Canva, you've probably got some of these tools. They're just calling them something differently.
[24:35]
But Padlet lets you do a KWL. And that's a really good tool to use. Socrative lets you do quizzes, exit tickets. It's very comprehensive. Nearpod is one that a lot of teachers like because it lets you push the content out to different student devices, a screen at a time, and then they can interact, whether it's multiple choice, open-ended, drawing, they can explore a 3D image. Oh, I love, you know, they can annotate a text online if you want them to do that.
[25:11]
So, you know, there are so many things out there that do this for you. And again, I'm all about making it easier. So find tools. Maybe you already have some. Start with what your district has. Find tools, hopefully free ones if you have to get something else, and use them to help.
[25:31]
Now, I would also give you this caution. Don't use too many. I had one parent tell me, she said, you know, they're using 20 different things. I can't keep up with what we're supposed to be doing. So find a couple of good ones and use those.
[25:46] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I wanted to ask Barbara, the book is loaded with those specific recommendations about using these tools for engagement and increasing the level of rigor and assessment. But one of the things that you touch on in the book that I wanted to make sure that we got to before we run out of time is about the idea of positive climate. And I think there's this sense sometimes that virtual learning is... It's kind of this grim compromise.
[26:13]
And as educators, we want students to still enjoy coming to school, even if coming to school just means opening up a laptop. How do we create that positive climate and culture that we want for our classrooms when our classrooms are virtual?
[26:26] SPEAKER_00:
You know, I think it starts with our own perspective. You know, this has been a tough year. There's just no getting around it. I get I have a let me just preface this with non life threatening, but I have a tumor and I have to get chemotherapy. And so we are extremely careful here. And my mom, who is 86, and I told you my dad died.
[26:51]
So she's struggling with that. She has dementia. So I don't get to see her as often. I have to be really careful about going down there. And I'll talk to her three or four times on the phone. And she's like, you know, everything's so boring.
[27:03]
I don't get to go anywhere. And I will call her and I'll say, mom, guess what? And she'll go, what? You sound really excited. I'll say, I get to go on a field trip today. She's like a field trip.
[27:14]
What do you do? And I said, I get to go to the bank and I'm going to go through the drive through to make a deposit. And I get to say hey to the bank teller through the window. And she will just laugh and laugh. And that's sort of the thing. You got to decide that no matter how bad things are, you're going to have a positive attitude.
[27:32]
So you got to start with that. And I know that's hard with remote learning. And then you're going to build things into your system that work. I think the videos that are encouraging are really important. I think having a weekly video. Welcome to the week.
[27:47]
We're going to have a great week. We're going to be doing these kinds of things. And I know y'all are going to have fun. I mean, I think the more positive you can say in a variety of ways, the better. I think if you're doing a video with students, I think there's a couple of things you can do. If you feel like it's a day where you need to get closer to the students.
[28:08]
Then you want nothing in the background, either put up a cloth or be against a wall and you want to slide your chair up as close as you can to the camera and really have it fill your face in terms of the screen. So that's one way to connect. But another way to connect is to show them your background and have interest in things up there and they get to see them and they get to say, oh, I see this, you know, and you talk to them about, you know, in case you see, I mean, right now you would see my Snoopy in the background and it gives you a way to connect. So there are positive things with that. And, you know, the more you do the positive feedback and the warm climate is having things in place so they feel safe and secure. You know, reminding them of things when they come back in January, they're going to be struggling because they've lost some time and they may forget where some things are.
[29:04]
You know, having things for parents so that they feel safe and secure. And again, I can't I can't overstate the importance of when you are doing video things, doing just a little bit, you know, 10 seconds of something personal. I was doing a Zoom with teachers. They were doing them after school with me. It was a series of 10. and I forgot to lock my cat up.
[29:26]
And so we're just getting started. And here comes my cat. She jumps right up in my lap and then steps up on the desk and gets in the video screen. And I was like, oh my gosh, these people are going to think I'm awful. And you know what? They all started laughing.
[29:39]
And all these people went and grabbed their pets and started putting them up. And we had a two minute conversation about pets. And then we got started and they were very focused. So it's okay to to do some fun things like that. I mean, it just really is. Probably in January, if I had a workshop in early January, I might wear one of those little headband hats with snowmen on top of it just to have fun.
[30:03]
You know, it's as hard as it is, what you've got to do is you've got to feel good so they will feel good. And the more fun you can make it, the better they will respond.
[30:14] SPEAKER_01:
I love it. Advice we could all use to make it more fun for everybody. We need it. We need it. So the book is Rigor in the Remote Learning Classroom. Barbara, if people want to learn more about the book or your other work or get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to find you online?
[30:30] SPEAKER_00:
The one-stop place is my website, www.barbarablackburnonline.com. Make sure you put the online in there. Apparently, barbarablackburn.com writes terrorist books, so don't do that.
[30:44]
So, barbarablackburnonline.com. It's got a contact me. It gives you a way to email me. It gives you my phone number so you can call me if you don't mind. You know, if it's a holiday, maybe skip that.
[30:55]
But I do answer my own phone. It's got information about the book, just all kinds of things. There's articles. In fact, there's over 100 free resources. on all kinds of topics, not just remote learning. And so you can get what you need there.
[31:11]
It will link you over to the book. You know, I think you'll find some really practical things, both on the website and in the book.
[31:17] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Barbara, thank you again for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure as always.
[31:21] SPEAKER_00:
Thank you very much. And I hope your listeners get some good ideas. And I hope everybody is able to just hang in there. You are still making a difference, even if it doesn't feel like it.
[31:31] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
