Learn Like A PIRATE

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Dustin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_02:

I am honored to be joined today by Paul Solars, who is a National Board Certified Teacher and 21st Century Skills Expert from Arlington Heights, Illinois. Paul was recently named a Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize And he is the author of Learn Like a Pirate, Empower Your Students to Collaborate, Lead, and Succeed.

[00:36] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:38] SPEAKER_02:

Paul, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Hey, thanks for having me, Justin. So you kind of ripped off Dave Burgess with this title, right? Learn Like a Pirate, Teach Like a Pirate. What's the deal there?

[00:47] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Yeah, Dave's my publisher, and he was kind enough to come to me and say, hey, listen, Paul, I'd really like it if you'd consider writing Learn Like a Pirate and focus on how the students can be empowered to lead the show, which represents what my classroom is really like. So it was a huge honor for him to invite me into the pirate brand.

[01:06] SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. I know Dave is a high school teacher. I've seen Dave present, and we've heard about his work, seen it on Twitter, read the book. But you're talking about empowering students earlier on in their school careers.

[01:19] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I've been a fifth grade teacher for 16 years, so it's all I know. I know fifth grade. But what I've done is I've had some sort of version of this go on for the last 16 years, and I've worked with teachers in our own school as far as We've worked together to try to figure out ways that we can make best practices happen in our classroom. And as I've talked with middle school and high school teachers over the years, I've learned ways that I could steal from them ideas and then also provide them with some ideas that work in our classroom. So, you know, I'm doing it from the fifth grade level, but we're learning how it can be made to work for primary students and for middle school students in high school.

[01:55]

But I've definitely got the intermediate perspective.

[01:57] SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So I know the book has the subtitle, Empower Your Students to Collaborate, Lead, and Succeed. Take us through those elements. What does it look like to collaborate, lead, and succeed in your classroom? And what do you share in the book?

[02:11] SPEAKER_01:

You know, the book really is an acronym. The PIRATE stands for an acronym. The P is peer collaboration. I is improvement-focused learning. R is responsibility. A is active learning.

[02:20]

T is 21st century skills. And E is empowerment. And I try to explain that those six elements realms or areas are what's needed in order to create a classroom environment where students feel comfortable leading and collaborating with each other, where you start to, you know, take down those walls between kids where maybe boys and girls don't want to work together in the younger grades or later on, you know, just people start to have cliques and we kind of destroy all of that as best we can so that kids want to work with each other and learn from each other, but also learn from the internet or go online together and work together or read a book together. So We're just setting the environment for collaborative learning where the teacher can set the stage and say, here's the task that you need to do. Here's a little bit of information to get you started to build your background. But then it's pretty much up to you to get to the next level.

[03:07]

And my job then becomes to walk around and give feedback. where the kids are pretty much taking it on their own each of the next steps. So I can give you an example. Right now we're in a social studies unit about westward expansion. So we've all become pioneers on the Oregon Trail, and we're all headed westward. They're truly engaged and engrossed in this because they're characters in this.

[03:32]

Each day we have a problem that's presented to us. So yesterday someone was starting to feel sick in our wagon train, and the kids, One of the gentlemen on the wagon train, a fake person, wanted to have these people stay behind so that we wouldn't all get sick. He decided he was going to make them stay behind. We had to learn about what government was like on the Oregon Trail. Did they have leaders? Did they have voting?

[03:55]

What did they do? So we researched a little bit of that. We decided what we wanted to do. We decided we wanted every family gets a vote. We voted to let them stay, but luckily they decided on their own that it would be best for everyone if they stayed behind, you know, instead of going with the wagon train. Then a snake oil salesman came by offering to sell some snake oil and make them all feel better, and my kids were like, yes, let's do it.

[04:17]

But then they researched that snake oil was not something that was real, and they said, don't do it, don't do it, you know. That was just for today. Every lesson's a little different. The focus is on different things that happen. Our big idea or our main objective right now is focusing on the problems that the pioneers faced along the Oregon Trail, learning a little bit of geography and some of the things that that area of the Northwest and some of the Midwest, the geography of that. But in general, the kids, I start it off and then I get the kids going and then bring them back.

[04:48]

They're collaborating. They do a little bit of working together, but then we bring them back to the whole group. And then I have them do some reflection activities that are fun. They might use Vokey to describe what they learned during their research in the simulation for the day. They might do some writing. They might do some acted outs or some tableau vivants where they pose for photographs of a scene from the simulation.

[05:09]

And that whole hour, hour and a half, two hours, whatever I might give to it for that day, it has a purpose. The first 15 minutes are for a reason and the next 15 are for a reason. But I pretty much set it up and get out of the way so that I can provide feedback every step of the way.

[05:25] SPEAKER_02:

I love it. And it reminds me of what you see in, say, the Danielson framework, if people are familiar with the Danielson evaluation framework, where at a proficient level, the teacher is running the classroom well, things are going well, students are succeeding. But at the distinguished level, or the level four, or whatever it's called in a particular area, students take on responsibility. And I was looking at what Charlotte Danielson said about your book.

[05:52] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

[05:52] SPEAKER_02:

that in her model she says i tried to describe at the distinguished level classrooms in which the teacher has created a community of learners with the students themselves assuming much of the responsibility for what occurs there mr solars offers specific ideas for how to accomplish that and she's talking about your book there which i think is a pretty great compliment from charlotte danielson who is uh you know not a person who who endorses books lightly or frequently to my knowledge

[06:16] SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. I don't know her pass on that. But, you know, when I set out, you know, I said if I could get Charlotte to say something about how it works within her framework, that would be huge for the teachers who are really taking this on. Because to say you're going to convert your classroom to a student-led classroom is not saying, you know, next week I'm going to, you know. offer this one strategy to my kids and then I'm done. It's kind of a big commitment.

[06:38]

But fortunately, you don't have to go all the way. You can do little parts of it. But I mean, for Charlotte to say, if you're doing this sort of thing in your classroom, you're achieving at a distinguished level, that was huge to me and a huge honor. So it was amazing when we got her to endorse the book.

[06:53] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it says a lot. And I think it speaks to the fact that this is the kind of teaching that we've known for a long time. is, you know, is better. You know, it's something that we aspire to, but at the same time, it's very, very difficult to pull off. And I think what Dave Burgess talks about in Teach Like a Pirate around engagement, around planning the kinds of lessons that, you know, that can really hook students in, you know, a lot of people would say to Dave, oh, that's great that you're creative, Dave. That's great that you have all these great ideas, but I'm just kind of a regular person.

[07:21]

You know, I do a good job. So all this crazy Teach Like a Pirate engagement stuff isn't for me.

[07:26] SPEAKER_01:

If you tell Dave that whole creative line, I know you've read the book, he says, that's so unfair to make me feel as though because I'm creative, it's easier for me. But he says, I work my tail off to be this creative and to work this hard. I agree. I've felt that kind of statement before. But it is. It's a tough process.

[07:45]

So you have to commit to a certain level of it. And then you have to believe in it because it really does work. But you have to have a full commitment to it.

[07:55] SPEAKER_02:

Well, let's talk a little bit about kind of learning outcomes or standards or the objectives that as adults, we hold ourselves responsible for helping students achieve. And I think that may be, you know, I think that's a very good thing, but I think it may be one of the barriers in our minds. to handing more responsibility over to students in your classroom how do you handle that issue of you know there are certain things that we have to learn this year these are the state standards these are the common core standards this is what's on the assessment whatever the you know the the impetus behind that expectation is there are certain things that students need to learn they need to master there are skills they need to develop so it's not as if you're saying well kids you know do whatever you want and as long as there's no trouble we're fine um You know, students are actually learning specific things. And I wonder how you handle that with your students and what part of that is handed over to them.

[08:43] SPEAKER_01:

You know, a lot of people, I think I even put a phrase in the book, you know, so do I just ask the kids what they want to learn and just, you know, let them go? You know, that's not what my classroom is about. I do have genius hour or passion time in my classroom where my kids do take on some topics of their own interest, but that's twice a week, an hour each time. That's not the majority of my day by any means. Sure. Just like any other teacher, I have Common Core if you're a Common Core state, and I have district standards and objectives that I have to meet to my kids.

[09:11]

Although I don't give grades in my class, they do get a report card every trimester, so I do have to be able to rationalize the grades that I provide them on the report card. Fortunately, the parents see how well the kids are doing and understand that there's evidence there even without grades. The reality is what I've done is I've taken Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe's understanding by design, and I've taken that concept of looking at my curriculum over the summer, each summer, because it seems like every year something's changing in the curriculum, and finding out what are my big ideas or the major understandings that my kids have to know and be able to do by the end of the unit. And I prioritize them. I list them out, and I say, all right, how is it that I'm going to get – How is it that I'm going to make sure that my students are going to, I don't use the word master, but show understanding of these concepts or big ideas. So my lessons are structured in order to maximize the focus on those big ideas and enduring understandings.

[10:08]

And then throughout the year, I refer to that long-term planner that I've used, you know, to do that in all subjects, math, reading, writing, science, social studies. You know, the major focus comes in science, social studies, because I can embed so many of the reading and writing objectives or big ideas into that. And then math is its own puppy. But...

[10:28]

But the idea is that planning over the summer or planning ahead of time, some districts do it for their teachers. Our district kind of trusts us to do it the best we can, but that planning ahead of time. And then what you end up doing is you end up freeing so much time because you take out a lot of the fluff. And I, believe me, the fun is still there. That's not what's gone. But the things that don't necessarily correlate to an objective or a big idea, that's what's been taken out and replaced with things that focus in on the big ideas, but yet add to the kind of classroom that I want it to be.

[11:00]

So student-led where I can provide opportunities for research and creation and problem solving and collaborate, you know, all these kinds of things. I want opportunities to be there. So I just kind of take out, if we have a textbook unit that the district provided me, I find out what those objectives were, what did they need to know and understand and be able to do. And I find ways of providing opportunities for my kids to maybe research that, or I might present some of it to them and then have them problem solve through an experience using the information or whatever. But The idea is that backward design over the summer and get your year planned out well and then sticking to it, even though you might fall behind a little bit, but get back on the track.

[11:45] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So you're putting the big pieces in place, kind of the skeleton or the framework, but you're also taking a lot out so that there's room for students to have some latitude.

[11:56] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because this style takes longer. A typical lesson might be a lecture with a reading with some sort of response or an exit slip or something like that. That might represent a typical lesson to someone. But for me, that's the style that I'm trying to get away from a little bit. I'm not saying it's wrong. Believe me, I'm a fifth grade teacher.

[12:15]

I think that there's still some valid points to doing that. But as much as I'm able to provide background knowledge to my kids quickly, give them a purpose for what they're going to do for the next half hour, 45 minutes, and get them going, I feel that that can be done in a slightly different way. And in a way where they're still reading things that are important to them. Like, for example, in Oregon Trail, we don't have a textbook, but we do have those objectives. So what I've done is I've taken a whole bunch of children's books...

[12:43]

And I'm thinking, you know, like the if you lived in the series of books where it's like if you lived on a covered wagon or whatever, those kinds of books where they have some pictures and some questions and whatever. And what I've done is I've I've like organized it. It was a lot of work up front, but now it's easy. But, you know, like today we were focused on diseases and illnesses along the trail. So I went through about eight different books and I said, OK, here are some good passages that I want my kids to read. I scanned them.

[13:07]

and I put them into a merged PDF document that my kids could click on on our website, and my kids could all be reading the reading that I wanted them to read after they've already had time to do some research, you know, freely. So some of my kids, when they freely researched, were able to discover what they needed, but others weren't. So now I'm ensuring that all students have been able to read the things that I really needed them to know. And we still talked about it, of course, too. So they had at least two exposures to the content that I wanted them to get today.

[13:35] SPEAKER_02:

What are the student dispositions or the kind of mindsets that kids need to be successful in this kind of classroom, especially if their experience has been kind of do what you're told, be compliant, and typically elementary kids are fairly good at being compliant and making the adults happy. What's different when you're asking students to lead?

[13:57] SPEAKER_01:

You know what? It's interesting, but I guess it depends on the school culture. Our school, I would say, is a mix between very traditional but definitely doing progressive things. I feel like my kids are not hard to break out of that mold of just be compliant and listen and just sit and be passive learners. My kids seem to be quickly ready to take on that leadership role and become a collaborative learner. But there are some things that I do at the beginning of the year that really do help to set the stage.

[14:28]

We have one of the big things is kids often come to you and they come to me at least. Boys don't always want to work with girls or, you know, there's some small cliques formed or whatever. Some kids just don't want to work with other kids. And so one of the things that I have to do at the beginning of the year is what I call level the playing field. And we do this classroom discussion called Marble Theory where I tell my kids, look, you know, a lot of the times people celebrate kids who are, you know, the star student or the star athlete or the star musician or whatever. But the reality is we all have talents.

[15:03]

We just have yet to discover all of them and we have to work hard to identify them. So. I tell them that we're all given the same number of marbles in our heads or wherever, and we can have an infinite number of cups to fill them with marbles. Each cup is labeled with a very, very, very specific skill. So you wouldn't say it's your reading cup. You'd say it's your oral reading fluency cup or your literal comprehension with whatever cup.

[15:29]

It'd be very specific. And most of the kids who are considered smart in our school are the ones who have their academic cups filled near the top with all their marbles. But other kids who have tremendous talent in other areas but not academics are considered dumb by some of the students. And so I quickly try to work them through this whole belief that if we stop thinking of the academic cups as the smart cups and we start looking at all the cups and saying, You know, smartness or intelligence or giftedness can show itself in so many different ways. It doesn't have to be, you know, reading, writing, science, social studies, math skills. It can be so many other ways.

[16:09]

We start to see each other as equals. We start to see each other as, man, you know what? You're right. You're struggling with math and science right now, but I'm struggling with my soccer skills and you can teach me that. And they start to see each other as members of a team that we each bring to the team different challenges but different strengths. And then once we set that stage and we level the playing field, the kids start to work together so much differently.

[16:34]

At the beginning of the year, you might randomly partner two kids together and they might give each other a look like, yuck, I don't want to work with that kid or whatever. But I'm telling you, as soon as you level the playing field and you start showing that that you believe that everybody is intelligent and everyone is gifted and that you care about everyone no matter what their flaws, you know, even those behavior kids, you know, like when the teacher overreacts to a behavior, then now the kids feel it's okay to overreact to that behavior. You know, my big thing is I want to be a little bit crabby with you right now because I don't like your behavior, but I... I totally care about you, and you're very important to me.

[17:07]

So I try to temper my concern for somebody, and that leads to the kids saying, you know what, I can totally work with that kid. I just have to be more patient with him or whatever. So I'm rambling, but the idea is level that playing field at the beginning, and your kids are going to be able to collaborate so much better.

[17:25] SPEAKER_02:

Well, and it brings up the idea of status, which I know is a big idea in especially secondary mathematics classrooms where teachers have to take purposeful action to minimize status differences because a lot of kids, whether it's girls or whether it's kids who just don't feel like they have a track record or a reputation for being good math students, will tend to kind of back away. And that impoverishes all of the discussions and the collaboration that takes place. So I think you're brilliant to, to focus on leveling that playing field, as you said.

[17:57] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I do agree that. Yeah. We got to, you know, kids can't think that girls are bad at something or boys are bad at something, you know, that, that kind of grouping, we just have to try to get rid of that, the stereotyping.

[18:06] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Paul, it's been a privilege to speak with you about learn like a pirate, empower your students to collaborate, lead and succeed. If you could give one piece of advice to our listeners who are primarily school leaders of, of different types, uh, about something that you think we should all do or should strive to make a reality in our schools. What do you think that would be?

[18:27] SPEAKER_01:

Well, you know, the one thing that my principal, after he told me to get onto Twitter, said to me and to others was, and this is probably for your listening audience, everybody's going to know this already, but the ability to take risks without worrying about consequences. So my principal just said, look, we've got to try to, you know, keep transforming our school into whatever we think it can become. And we can't be afraid to do new things, even though, yeah, we're going to screw up and it's not always going to look good and it's not always going to feel good. But we have to model what good risk-taking really looks like so that our students become the risk-takers that we're asking them to do. So I would love it if all administrations were able to say, yeah, Yes, we have a curriculum. Yes, we have programs that we want you to use.

[19:16]

But if you need to take risks and try different things, we're going to support you with the understanding that if it fails and if it's not the right direction, that you rethink it and you reprioritize and revise what's going on. I feel like I'm in a community where I can really take risks and not everything turns out right. I almost always point it out to my kids because I don't want them thinking that I think I'm perfect and that I don't make mistakes. I want them to know, look at all the mistakes I make because...

[19:47]

I want you guys taking all these risks too and making tons of mistakes because that's where we grow and that's how we learn. So it's got to start from the top for teachers because a lot of them are afraid to do that without permission. And that's how we're going to transform our kids into these amazing 21st century learners.

[20:02] SPEAKER_02:

Fantastic. I think that theme of permission both for staff and for students is a huge one. Sure. Well, Paul, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to speak with you today.

[20:12] SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, Justin. I appreciate being on your show.

[20:14] SPEAKER_00:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[20:19] SPEAKER_02:

So high-performance instructional leaders. I have to say, one thing I was thinking about as I spoke with Paul about how he shares leadership with his students and how he helps develop their capacity for leadership and for taking on more responsibility for their learning. What really struck me is that this is something that we have to do at the school level. I think the days of the principal being the leader and that's it need to be behind us. We need to be purposefully creating schools where distributed leadership is the reality, where distributed leadership is the norm. And where distributed leadership is not just a matter of delegating tasks and saying, I, as the principal, am too busy to do this, therefore you do it.

[21:00]

It's a leadership task, so I've distributed leadership. But treating distributed leadership as a matter of collective responsibility. And I think as leaders, one of our main responsibilities is... is to make sure that our students, our staff, and everyone that we're sharing leadership with has what they need and is having their capacity enhance and that our organization is having its capacity for distributed leadership enhanced.

[21:25]

so that we can have a high leadership culture. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, the idea of having a high leadership culture. And we might tend to be a little bit afraid of that because we think, well, if everyone's a leader, then what am I here for as the principal? What's my role? But what turns out to be the case, if you look at any school that has a high leadership culture, you'll see that the principal is maybe not as necessary for every single little thing, but the principal has an enormous amount of influence because the more leadership is found throughout the school, the more channels there are for the principal's leadership to be exercised and to reach all corners of the school. So we're actually making some fairly big changes at the principal center in the coming months to emphasize distributed instructional leadership.

[22:13]

And in our flagship program, the high performance instructional leadership network, you're going to see an increased emphasis on distributed instructional leadership, both for staff and for students. So I want to encourage you to keep an eye out for the new materials that we're releasing and the new programs that we're offering to give you the tools that you need to build capacity for instructional leadership among your staff and students. And if you'd like to learn more about the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network, you can find that on our website at principalcenter.com slash leadership.

[22:43] Announcer:

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