Teacher Voice & Aspirations

[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 Dr. Lisa Landy. Lisa is Director of International Programs at the Qualia Institute for School Voice and Aspirations and the author of three books, including Engagement by Design, Creating Learning Environments Where Students Thrive.

[00:32] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:34] SPEAKER_01:

Lisa, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.

[00:36] SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much. Looking forward to the conversation.

[00:38] SPEAKER_01:

Likewise, and I'm interested in talking with you about the idea of designing learning environments or creating learning environments because often the learning environment is just kind of there, right? It's just, you know, there's a classroom, there is a curriculum, there is a physical space and material to learn. And we don't necessarily think about designing the learning environment itself. So what does that mean right off the bat to design a learning environment?

[01:03] SPEAKER_00:

The point that you brought up opening there is exactly the conversation that was the impetus for this book, sitting around a dinner table with Doug Fisher and Nancy Fry and Dominique Smith, Russ Qualia and myself, who were all co-authors on this work, and we were having that exact conversation. Doug and Nancy, of course, who have written, I think, about every topic known to man in the educational world, but at the time were doing a lot around their playbooks, around math and reading in particular, and Dominique was doing a lot of thinking around restorative justice and practices that are very restorative. Russ and I were doing a lot of work around student voice and these concepts of self-worth, engagement, and purpose. And we just kind of like all those ideas were like meshing over what was a really great Japanese food meal, if you were wondering. And we were talking about the same thing. How do we keep what happens in a classroom from just kind of being, here we are, here we are today, and this is what's happening.

[01:53]

And we're kind of getting drug along versus being really intentional on the front end of creating that learning environment and where students can meet their maximum potential. So we've jumped into a bunch of research, all being the research data nerds that we are. And we really focus in on these components of relationships and what it takes to set up a learning environment where relationships can thrive. And then we looked at clarity. How can we be really clear, both from the teacher standpoint, which I think there's been a lot written about that, but we really tried to take it from a different lens of how can we make sure students are clear? on what the expectations are all the way from behavior to co-constructing success criteria to co-constructing evaluations.

[02:32]

For example, not just having a rubric handed to you, but having students be part of the construction of that. And then the third component that we looked at was challenge. How do we tackle that very hard piece of instruction of making sure that each student is being challenged in a meaningful way from where they're at? So those were the components that the research led us to really look into and to talk about how can we be proactive on the front end of designing environments where those things can thrive.

[02:57] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Lisa, let's get right into talking about how we build relationships in the classroom, knowing that students are brought together by forces beyond their control. This is not a group of friends that students are choosing to be with. They're placed in our classrooms, and we don't choose our own students. Everybody is brought together, and we have to make a community out of people who come together from interests and backgrounds. So what are some of the key findings of your research around how we can design our environment to foster relationships?

[03:26] SPEAKER_00:

Well, one of the very first things we found is that we tend to do a really good job in the first two weeks of school of lending importance and time to this concept of building relationships. So students enter a new classroom. We do a typical get to know you type activity. We have students fill out a card telling us who they are and one or two facts about them. And then, unfortunately, in too many cases, it's like, well, check, we did that. We built a relationship.

[03:50]

Now onward to the curriculum and the learning. But imagine if we viewed our personal relationships like that. Well, went on a first date, learned a few facts about someone, shared a meal, check, done building the relationship. It just can't work quite like that. In order for the relationships to be genuine and real and for them to thrive, that has to be something that we focus on all year long. And we often hear, I'd like to, but I just don't have time to do that.

[04:14]

And Dr. Russ, you know, our fearless leader, he would wag his finger. He has these certain statements that we call his finger wagging statements. And he would, you know, wave a finger and say, we don't have time not to. The moments that we spend building relationships are some of the most critical that we could ever commit to the instructional time that we have. And we see over and over again that when we have created learning environments where students have positive relationships with the instructor and with one another, you actually earn time back to focus on curriculum in a meaningful way.

[04:44]

Students are more likely to be comfortable asking questions so you can clear up misconceptions. of content that's being taught. Students are more likely to work hard and efficiently for teachers that they have a relationship with versus ones where they think they're just a no one sitting in the seat that is unnoticed. So yes, it's a commitment of time. We see it as incredibly valuable time to focus on the building of relationships. And I think I mentioned it's important not just to think in terms of the relationship between student and teacher, but also the relationship that they have with one another.

[05:14]

That does not mean they are all going to walk out of that class being best friends, especially in middle school. But what we are talking about is can we get to a place where we see each other as a room of co-learners, that we are in this together, how successful any individual is going to be is going to be dependent on our ability to work together and just being very transparent. And we do that at all age levels from pre-K to all the way up to seniors in high school. Having those transparent moments where we talk about we're in this together, we're working as a group, we're going to have positive relationships together. Will there be bumps? Absolutely.

[05:47]

But we are going to care about the relationship aspect of our classroom as much as we are going to care about the content that we're learning.

[05:54] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. You talk in this chapter about the invitational aspect of the relationship that teachers create. So as teachers think about beginning a new year, and not only what they do in the first couple of weeks, as you said, but throughout the year, what are some of those invitational aspects and take us into what that means?

[06:09] SPEAKER_00:

So some of the things that we found is we did tons and tons of focus groups with both students and with teachers and teachers would talk to the fact they're very aware of it, that there are certain students that are just easy to build a relationship with. They're the ones who they come to you. They share things about their life. They are comfortable talking to adults and it's just easy. Then there's a whole lot of other students for whom that doesn't just naturally happen. And particularly with those students, we have to, as the adult, become much more invitational about inviting the relationship.

[06:37]

Starts with simply knowing their name, which I know sounds like such a kind of a throwaway. Our data that we've collected at the Institute, we see that depending on the school, it really highly varies if it's part of the culture or not, but it can be up to 30 or 40% of students in a school that have at least one teacher that they believe does not know their name, which is just shocking to us. So as a team, we then went and just asked our own kids. We had a big team, lots of kids in the mix, and we were really surprised to find that, yeah, sure enough, even with our own children, especially in the secondary school, they would have at least one teacher that they're like, yeah, I don't think they know my name. You say, well, how do they grade you? And they're like, I don't know.

[07:12]

It's a mystery. Now, I'm convinced that in many of those cases, the teacher probably does know their name. They're maybe just not using it. I think teachers say one of the barriers is that students are coming with such unique names these days that they're afraid of mispronouncing their name. And I totally get that. I'm in that same boat all the time.

[07:29]

And yet a name is so foundational to who you are as a human. And if you're never hearing it, you don't feel known. So asking those students with challenging names, Hey, I really want to learn your name and say it right. And I'm probably going to mess it up a thousand times, but keep correcting me. Or do you have a trick that can help me remember it? Because they've had that challenging to pronounce name their whole life.

[07:47]

And so they usually have some kind of little trick that they can help you to learn it. Dr. Russ has challenged us as a team this year for the students that we were engaged with to not only learn their name, but ask them, how did you get their name? Because almost everybody knows at least something about their first, middle, or last name that is more to the, and why is that name important to who you are as a person or your place in this world? So we start with the name, but the inviting classroom then goes so much further into that. Inviting students in a very safe way to engage, to get to know other people, to put their ideas and their spin on things, their interests into the things that are being talked about in the classroom.

[08:24] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I imagine with the silent G in his name, that's something that matters to Russ.

[08:29] SPEAKER_00:

Funny story. He once asked me, we were doing a dual keynote and in front of a very large audience, Dr. Russ asked me, so for example, how did you get your name? And I drew a blank. I was like, I don't know. I've actually never asked my parents before.

[08:42]

And he's like, couldn't you have made something up? I'm like, I should have, but it actually prompted me to go and ask my parents, why did you name me this? And I learned something I'd never known even about myself, just from that simple question.

[08:53] SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk a little bit about clarity because often we're most intentional about what we're going to teach. You know, we often have a syllabus at the secondary level. We have scope and sequence. We might have a very detailed curriculum that we're following. How does design factor into clarity in what we'll teach and how we'll teach it?

[09:12] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, when we really dug into what was happening in classroom practice around clarity, we found that there were some of these things that had been well intended suggested practices. For example, stating a learning objective up on the board or the standard that you're covering for the day. So that's well intended. It's making sure that the teacher and everybody knows this is what we're learning today. But then some of those practices over time had kind of morphed into what I would refer to as crutches. So it's like, yes, it's up there on the board, but what's the purpose in having it up there?

[09:42]

Are we talking to students about it? Or has it just become like, oh, I have to do this because if I get evaluated, somebody needs to see it up in the corner of the board versus nobody really cares about the standard number. That means nothing to students. But I want that clarity to exist where teacher and student alike know here's the topic that we're learning today. Here's why it's important for us to learn this. Here's how I'm going to know if I've been successful on it.

[10:05]

And this is the one that I think we often leave out. Here's how it is connected to the other things that I'm learning so that it's not just this one isolated standard or fact that I'm learning in a silo, but I'm looking for and how does that connect to my life and to the other things that I'm learning in school right now? That all sounds really nice to spit out in theory in those 30 seconds right there, but it's a lot more challenging to actually create that with students. And the biggest barrier to creating that with students is simply time. It cost me 10 seconds of teacher time to write the standard on the board. It takes minutes of classroom instruction time to really create that shared ownership of what we're learning and why with students.

[10:44]

And yet we find that to be really important, valuable time that we use in any given instructional situation. Now, we don't need to swing to the extreme. When we started talking to teachers about this, they're like, there was a tendency to then swing to the extreme. Okay, fine. We're going to co-construct everything with students. So we're going to co-construct the success criteria and the rubric with students.

[11:04]

And they spent a whole, you know, two hours doing that. And it's like, well, we can't do that every single time. You've got to swing that pendulum back to the middle from it being, All teacher driven. I understand and have clarity on what we're learning and why you can write it on the board to there's not time to co-construct everything to somewhere in the middle where I can say as an instructor, here's what we're learning today. Here's my why. Take 30 seconds around your table to talk about what does this mean to you?

[11:28]

What does it mean in your words? How is it connecting to things that you're learning in your classrooms? have a two-minute whole group discussion, and then we move on into the instruction or with the rubric, for example. Here is the rubric that I've started. I'm going to give you guys two minutes at your table talk to take a look at it. I want each of you to ask a question.

[11:46]

What's something that you're not totally clear yet from this rubric? And I also want each of you to add one thing to it. a success criteria that will mean something to your group. So you're not having them create it from scratch. You're saying, here's what's been established, but giving students an opportunity to put their voice and their stamp into that. So it's co-constructed.

[12:04] SPEAKER_01:

Love it. Been speaking with leaders from a number of Australian schools that have school improvement goals around student goal setting. And I've had a lot of conversations with them about the kind of chicken and egg problem of introducing new content and then having students set goals related to that content. Because, you know, to some extent, you don't know what you don't know. And it's difficult to set goals from scratch. You know, like, what do you know about the War of 1812?

[12:26]

Nothing. What do you want to learn? I guess everything.

[12:29] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

[12:29] SPEAKER_01:

because I don't know anything. So I love that idea of having students add to what the teacher is bringing to the table, not start from scratch, because essentially to get to the process of setting goals when students are starting with very little about a unit of content, you basically have to teach the entire unit to get to that goal. So talk to us a little more, if you could, about that student involvement in the success criteria. Why does that matter to have students input and buy into the success criteria?

[12:55] SPEAKER_00:

I think the short answer is because that's where we see shared responsibility go from something that's a nice idea in theory to something that comes alive in practice. And it's that whole thing of do students feel like school is something that's being done to them or something that is being done with them? And the second is what we are after. If I come to the table as the instructor and I'm like, here's what we're going to learn. Here's what it's going to look like. Let's go.

[13:16]

I'm owning it. I'm owning the whole thing because I've laid it out. When students have the opportunity to co-construct even a small piece of that, I am now sharing that responsibility both for what's going to happen and for the outcome because they've been a part of creating it. And go back to that. Doesn't mean we just turn them loose and say, oh, it's up to you. What do you want to learn?

[13:35]

What would that look like? We don't see that go well, but it has to be this. The teacher is very intentionally creating it and then providing strategic opportunities for students to be a part, to contribute, to enhance, to demonstrate understanding of what both the learning itself is going to look like and what the success criteria at the end is going to look like.

[13:56] SPEAKER_01:

You know, and this is something that we often talk about with establishing class rules that, you know, we want students to have buy-in, we want students to have ownership of what the class rules are going to be, something that we think about at the beginning of the year. But you're talking about for the curriculum itself, for how students will be assessed, for how their work will be assessed. You're talking about giving students real opportunities to have input on, as you said, the rubric and things like that. Talk to us a little bit more about how that works, especially at the secondary level where there's a lot of content. That content may be unfamiliar to students. Maybe take us into that.

[14:28]

I'd love to know more about how that works.

[14:30] SPEAKER_00:

Now you bring up a really good point. We have kind of some of these practices that we do at the beginning of the year, like, for example, co-constructing classroom rules. Then we kind of move back into the more teacher-directed type approach. Our work, especially around student voice, is looking for how do we make that become not an exception to the rule, but the way of being in schools, where that approach to students as meaningful partners in their education becomes a way of being. It's just naturally woven throughout every aspect of things that we do in school. Now, I think one of the tricky parts of that is it's easy to do that if something goes well.

[15:04]

Like, oh, this is great. I got your input and it went well. We can celebrate that and move forward. When it doesn't go well, it falls onto the teacher. Like, ooh, I let students in on making this decision or giving them a little bit more responsibility and it didn't go well. What do I do with that?

[15:19]

Our knee-jerk reaction as an instructor is to sweep in and fix it, clean it up, and then say, well, that didn't work. I'm going to go back to the teacher-directed way of being. We think that is a tremendous learning opportunity for students to come in and say, all right, we had co-ownership of this. That also means co-responsibility for the outcome. So let's talk about it. Why didn't that go well?

[15:40]

What could we do different so that it will go better next time? But I think schools, you know, we're full of perfectionists and overachievers. I think most educators, you know, they at some point figured out how to game the system of school well and be really successful. And it's a well-intended thought or feeling that we want things to go smoothly all the time. And yet we find that sometimes in those bumps and the mess of when things don't go well, that some of the best learning occurs and where we see that shared responsibility really come alive because we can't just be responsible when it goes well. We also have to be responsible when things don't go well.

[16:14] SPEAKER_01:

I'm thinking about, you know, the students who maybe are the least like us, because as you said, you know, we tend to recognize the students who are the most like us, you know, maybe students who are doing very well, students who remind us of ourselves. But, you know, I think a big part of our success as educators is how we're able to reach the students who are struggling more, who are not as engaged. And thinking about the chapter on engagement in the book, What are some of the biggest hurdles that we need to get over to engage the students that often get overlooked? The students who don't have as much in common with their teachers, the students who don't feel the same connection to the classroom that higher achieving students do. How do we pull them in?

[16:53] SPEAKER_00:

Man, that's such a huge challenging thing that we spend a lot of time talking to teachers about because yes, this percent of students for whom school works really well. And then there's another percent who's like, well, it's a struggle, but we're in. And then there's this group that's just really challenging to engage. What we find when we do focus groups with those students who you had put in that, I'm disengaged. We call them hibernating students. They're in this state of hibernation.

[17:16]

They're just kind of showing up. They're not doing a lot of doing and they're not doing a lot of dreaming about the future. We find that they feel incredibly misunderstood, that they get labeled as lazy or I don't care. And seldom, I actually have yet to talk to a student who when we really dig into it, they're just lazy and they don't care. There's actually something much more profound to their life that is causing them to be in that space of hibernation. What we find never works is to tell them to work harder.

[17:43]

And interestingly, that's the number one thing that we tell students who are struggling to be engaged. We say, come on, get your assignments in, work harder, you got this, and we're trying to do it in a very encouraging way. But they've already demonstrated that they are not motivated by the assignments or the points or the grade. So what will they be motivated by? We go back to relationship of letting them know, I care more about you as a person than I do about the points right now. Now, eventually we're going to have the conversation of, and because I care about you, I want you to be successful in this class.

[18:11]

So of course I want to help you get caught up. But you need to first just back off from that and say, all right, tell me who you are. What do you care about? I am totally seeing day in and day out right now that you are not caring about social studies. But what is it that you do care about, you know, and that it goes back to the adult having to make the invitation to find out who are you? What makes you tick?

[18:31]

What are your struggles? What are your fears? What are the things that you do care about? And how can I then anchor leveraging a relationship and what I'm learning about you to get into a place where you can more effectively engage in the learning that's occurring in class? So I think it links. It's funny, these three pieces that we talk about in the book, relationships, clarity, and challenge, even in this conversation, we're kind of taking them on linearly, which is the way to do it.

[18:55]

And yet in the book, we represent them in a Venn diagram because we see that they overlap and that you can't tackle one without it then connecting to the other and to the other. So there is such an interconnectedness between these three pieces.

[19:08] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit more about challenge, if we could, because I feel like challenge is one of those things that we're tempted to back off on when students seem overwhelmed or students seem disengaged. And yet the challenge absolutely needs to be there. So how can we think about challenge, especially when it comes to maybe students who are struggling, maybe students who are reading below grade level and struggling to access written material in the first place? How do we need to think about struggle of different types?

[19:37] SPEAKER_00:

So we've kind of landed on this analogy, especially in our conversations with students, that's taking our ability to talk with them in a meaningful way about challenge to a whole new level. And that's by comparing it to the gaming world. So have you ever played a game like Candy Crush or something similar?

[19:52] SPEAKER_01:

Sure, yeah.

[19:53] SPEAKER_00:

So what happens if it's too easy for you? You're playing Candy Crush or something similar. It's too easy. What happens?

[19:59] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's boring. Why bother?

[20:00] SPEAKER_00:

It's boring. And so you check out and you probably quit playing. Why bother? But what happens if it's so hard? Like you keep playing the same level over and over and over and you never pass it. What happens?

[20:10] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. You get frustrated. You give up.

[20:11] SPEAKER_00:

Yep, you get frustrated and you give up. Kids immediately, regardless of their age, even the little itty bitty peanuts, you know, we use different game examples, but they totally get this example. That if it's too easy, you're bored and you give up. If it's too hard, you're frustrated and you give up. And so there are these in the gaming world, magical, magical algorithms that help to know here's how far we can push you before you will give up. And then we need to give you a little bit of support so you can pass the level.

[20:35]

And they totally connect with that. We tell them a teacher is trying to do that exact same thing for up to 30, 35 students at any given time. They're trying to look at you and say, too easy? Are you about to give up? Too hard? Are you about to get frustrated and give up?

[20:48]

And that's really hard for one teacher to do for that many students at one time. Now, they're going to keep doing their best to do it. But if you as a student can be honest and start to be cognitively aware of your own place on that challenge continuum, you can become the biggest partner for your teacher in helping to create a challenge that is just right for you. Now, our commitment as a teacher has to be, my goal is not to make you work harder or make you do more work. It's to make you do work that is in that right challenge place for you. Because that's the biggest barrier students tell us.

[21:19]

Well, if I tell you it's too easy and I'm about to give up, you're just going to make me do more. I'm like, no, let's change that more to different. My commitment to you, if you're honest with me and you let me know when it's too easy or too hard, it's not going to be about the more. It's going to be about the type of work and the type of cognitive thinking that we are doing. That has been transformative in our conversation with students about this whole thing called challenge. How do we find that just right spot in the middle where we can keep you moving forward but not so hard that you're wanting to check out?

[21:49] SPEAKER_01:

We've talked a number of times in our conversation today and previously, Lisa, about this idea of actually asking students, of hearing from students directly about what they need, about what their perceptions are, about what their experience is. Could you tell us a little bit more about the Qualia Institute for School Voice and Aspirations and why listening to students makes such a difference? It's something that we don't always hear much about, but I know your organization has been on the forefront of promoting that idea of hearing from students and using what we learn to bring about improvement.

[22:18] SPEAKER_00:

That's something that we're incredibly passionate about. We have three fundamental beliefs at the Quality Institute. The first is that we believe students are the potential, not the problem. And it can be really easy to get stuck in that problem mindset of, oh man, and trust me, we are realists. We know students are coming to us with a lot of challenges, but we see it as our great privilege to get to help them navigate through those challenges. But we see them at their core as being loaded with potential.

[22:42]

And the real key is how do we tap into that potential? The second is that we truly believe students have loads to teach us The question is, are we willing to listen and genuinely learn from them? Students tell us all the time in a variety of different ways that adults are really great at fake listening. They're like, yeah, they'll ask you a question, but we know they're not really interested in the answer or they're thinking about something else while you're giving them an answer. Yet on the flip side, when we ask question and focus groups, how do you know when a teacher really cares about you? A huge common theme is something around when they ask you how you're doing and they wait for an answer.

[23:15]

when they ask you a question and you can tell they are genuinely interested in the response that you are giving. So there's such a connectedness to that feeling like you are valued and heard to the way that we listen to students. So we genuinely at our core believe we have a lot to learn from them. And the third, The only way that we can move forward is in partnership with students. They are this huge untapped potential of a partner in schools. And that when we do things with students, it becomes incredibly transformative.

[23:42]

And we look at that all the way from in the classroom to just as we were talking about earlier, co-constructing success criteria to giving them truly meaningful decision-making opportunities at the school level. to looking at data side by side. We highly value student voice data. We have surveys that we use that really drive our work, but it's not just about the check. We gave a survey and we looked at it for 20 minutes and around Robin activity at a staff meeting. No, we are going to look at that data all year long with students.

[24:10]

Now, not an entire data set all at one time, but hey, we're talking about an influx of behavioral issues let's look at the data out of our student voice data set related to behavior and what can we learn about that and then not just the what do you think it means but and how do you think we can solve it so really engaging students in that meaningful conversation of what do these numbers mean to you because we sure make a lot of assumptions as adults about data that we find are often really off when we start to talk about it with students they have a totally different idea and then engaging them in that action piece And what are we going to do about it? Because voice isn't just about students telling adults what they want them to do, what they want us to do for them. It's about what are we going to do together? What are your ideas and what's going to be your shared responsibility in taking action?

[24:55] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Engagement by Design, Creating Learning Environments Where Students Thrive. Lisa, if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about your work and the work of your organization, where's the best place for them to go online?

[25:07] SPEAKER_00:

We would love for you to visit us at qualiainstitute.org. There's a silent G in there. So it's Q-U-A-G-L-I-A institute.org. We have loads of free resources and articles, all sorts of stuff that you can tap into related to engagement and a whole other variety of resources related to voice and self-worth engagement and purpose.

[25:29]

so we invite you to visit us there and all of our contact information is there as well if you want to reach out for a personal conversation we have a steadfast commitment that we get back to every email that's sent to us within a 24-hour period because what you have to say what you're interested in talking to us about is really important so definitely invite you to reach out if there's something you'd like to further discuss

[25:49] SPEAKER_01:

Dr. Lisa Landy, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio once more.

[25:52] SPEAKER_00:

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

[25:54] Announcer:

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