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123: Humanizing Professional Development w/ Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond
6 Plays2 years ago
Today we are joined by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. Joining us on election day, there’s frankly a lot of anxiety around the current state of our world…not just who will win the election but if those results will be accepted, a general cynicism about our future, and especially in the classroom, teachers are reporting extraordinary rates of burnout and nihilism.
Dr. Darling-Hammond has done a ton of work to improve educational policy: both by supporting teachers and by changing systems in schools to support learners, she's advocated for higher standards of the profession and fighting back against authoritarian, behaviorist methods. Yet, given the state of the world today and all the things going on, how do we inspire hope and restore that humanity to professional development?
In this podcast, we discuss:
- Where should we go next? We know that many schools are shifting to more rote practices. This was already happening through various “back to basics” movements, and is reemerging in force in the “learning loss” debate. This is further complicated by the politicization of teaching to new levels, between outcries about CRT, LGBTQIA+ rights, antiracism, etc. - even just using the term “progressive education” at all.
- How do we navigate those waters? What do we build professional development that address this in 2022? How can teachers and administrators build these practices?
- How can professional development be used to combat those who wish to discredit educator expertise and shift to hiring unlicensed teachers and/or gig-based workers? How can we ensure that we maintain a high standard for the profession?
- At a systemic level…what does this look like for school administrators? Attempts to do school reform at a national level seems to have always centered on national testing and teacher evaluations, and it’s been a “back to basics” way of looking at education that goes to those non-supported-by-research practices.
Guest
Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Docummun Professor of Education Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign. She is the President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. Also, she’s the former President of the American Educational Research Association. She’s written over 25 books and 500 articles including The Right to Learn, Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning, and The Flat World and Education. She was the leader of the education transition team for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. And, she began her career as a public school teacher and co-founded a preschool and public high school.
*In the recording, it was incorrectly mentioned that Dr. Darling-Hammond is the former president of LPI, she is the current president. She led both Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's US Dept of Education transition teams.
Resources
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Transcript
Introduction of the Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 123 of our podcast.
00:00:14
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm part of the progressive education nonprofit Human Restoration Project.
00:00:19
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Jordan Bacca, Kimberly Baker and Kevin Gannon.
00:00:27
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:28
Speaker
You can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org or find us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm going to read a limited portion of your CV because we only have 30 to 40 minutes.
Meet Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond
00:00:40
Speaker
We're joined by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond.
00:00:42
Speaker
She is the Charles E. DuCamin Professor of Education Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.
00:00:48
Speaker
She founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy and Education and served as the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign.
00:00:57
Speaker
She is the former president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute.
00:01:01
Speaker
Also, she's the former president of the American Educational Research Association.
00:01:06
Speaker
She's written over 25 books and 500 articles, including The Right to Learn, Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning, and The Flat World in Education.
00:01:14
Speaker
She was the education advisor to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and volunteer leader of Joe Biden's transition team for the U.S. Department of Education.
00:01:22
Speaker
And she began her career as a public school teacher and co-founded a preschool and public high school.
00:01:28
Speaker
So that's just a taste of that.
00:01:29
Speaker
But thank you so much for being here, Linda.
00:01:31
Speaker
It's seriously an honor for you to be here.
00:01:33
Speaker
Oh, I'm delighted to be with you.
00:01:35
Speaker
You're joining
Election Anxiety and Education Impact
00:01:36
Speaker
us today.
00:01:36
Speaker
It's election day, which is going to theme some of our questions.
00:01:40
Speaker
And frankly, there's a lot of anxiety around the current state of the world, not just who's going to win the election, but if those results will be accepted.
00:01:49
Speaker
There's a general cynicism about our future, especially in the classroom.
00:01:54
Speaker
Teachers right now are
00:01:55
Speaker
reporting extraordinarily high rates of burnout, of nihilism, general cynicism that just really reflects the population at large.
00:02:04
Speaker
And you've done a ton of work to improve educational policy, right?
00:02:07
Speaker
You're both by supporting teachers and by changing systems in school to support learners.
Inspiring Change in Teaching
00:02:12
Speaker
You've advocated for higher standards within the profession and fighting back against the more authoritarian behaviorist methods of school.
00:02:20
Speaker
Yet, I kind of want to frame today's conversation around inspiring hope or restoring humanity really to professional development.
00:02:28
Speaker
How do we navigate those waters of inspiring change within the profession and helping teachers become better teachers in the midst of all the crazy stuff going on in the world and the attacks on the teaching profession at large?
Teacher Stress and Holistic Education
00:02:44
Speaker
What are your general thoughts about the state of teaching today?
00:02:47
Speaker
Well, my thoughts go in all directions.
00:02:49
Speaker
You know, we, of course, have enormous amounts of stress that everyone is experiencing.
00:02:55
Speaker
And teachers, because they are people with big hearts and strong concerns for the students they teach,
00:03:04
Speaker
They experience all of the issues we've had in the pandemic and in the politics of the country, not only for themselves, but then the experience of their students too.
00:03:16
Speaker
Schools have been disrupted in many, many ways and teachers have stepped up all over the world, really.
00:03:22
Speaker
to be the first line of support for families, for children.
00:03:27
Speaker
And many of them have their own families, you know, that they are also needing to support.
00:03:33
Speaker
So it's been a very, very stressful time.
00:03:36
Speaker
And, you know, I think
00:03:38
Speaker
There are some important realizations that the system has been experiencing as a result of these times, the importance of a holistic approach, the importance of social and emotional learning and supports for teachers as well as students.
00:03:56
Speaker
I don't think there's a
00:03:58
Speaker
an argument now, the way there was during No Child Left Behind, for example, that we should just be focusing in on test prep.
00:04:08
Speaker
There's a lot more understanding that we are whole people who need to be in community with each other, need to be in support systems with each other.
00:04:18
Speaker
And I don't know any school systems that aren't paying some attention to the wellness and
00:04:26
Speaker
whole child, whole professional side of the coin.
00:04:29
Speaker
I will say, however, some of them are more attuned to the needs of students than they are to the needs of the professionals who are serving the students.
00:04:38
Speaker
And that's an important awareness as well.
00:04:42
Speaker
So it's a time of great stress, but it's also a time of great changes.
Global Crises Affecting Education
00:04:48
Speaker
You know, when we have these moments in human history where there's huge disruption, we are experiencing an ongoing public health crisis because we're not out of the pandemic yet.
00:04:59
Speaker
We're experiencing an ongoing economic crisis, a climate crisis, a civil rights crisis, certainly a long overdue reckoning with
00:05:11
Speaker
civil rights issues, not only in this country, but elsewhere.
00:05:14
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When all of that happens, those are moments when you can see major disruptive change in the way that people think about what they're doing.
00:05:22
Speaker
And so I do see that happening in some parts of the country.
00:05:26
Speaker
And I also see places where teachers are stepping up and taking leadership roles, where people are starting new school designs and teachers are joining sometimes with parents and sometimes with other professionals to rethink and redesign schools.
Vision for Humane School Designs
00:05:45
Speaker
I have been in touch with the superintendent in Cleveland, Ohio, where not far from where you're located,
00:05:52
Speaker
And what Eric Gordon talks very passionately about is how important it is to essentially throw over the factory model school designs that we inherited from 100 years ago and recreate schools in a way that is humane and humanistic and supportive.
00:06:11
Speaker
And I hope that that impulse is
00:06:15
Speaker
which I see in various pockets around the country, continues to spread.
00:06:19
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This is the moment when we need to be taking advantage of that disruption to create a new approach to schooling that will be what we use for the next century.
00:06:32
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I think there's something to be said, too, about maintaining that hope.
00:06:36
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I remember when remote schooling first came to the fold in March 2020.
00:06:42
Speaker
Time now is so relative.
00:06:45
Speaker
But there was so much hope at that onset that we would see schools as a whole change.
00:06:50
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Like there was this mass disruption that everything was going on.
00:06:53
Speaker
People were, for better or for worse, noticing all of the cracks that existed.
00:06:58
Speaker
And there was a lot of talk about, let's completely reimagine, for example, standardized testing.
00:07:03
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All of these universities stopped doing testing.
00:07:06
Speaker
forced or they switched to like blind test admissions or they just threw out accepting grades altogether and shifted to universal mass admittance programs and the world didn't fall apart.
00:07:16
Speaker
So I figured, oh, hey, cool.
00:07:18
Speaker
We're going to start seeing massive change on the horizon.
Balancing Professional Development and Tradition
00:07:21
Speaker
However, there's also been calls recently to go.
00:07:23
Speaker
It's kind of like a modern day interpretation of back to basics where it's like a return to normalcy scare quotes.
00:07:30
Speaker
How do we continually inspire that hope
00:07:34
Speaker
within professional development that we can still change things without buying into all of the cynicism that exists in the teaching profession.
00:07:47
Speaker
That's a tough question because it depends on where you're located and what the experience is around
California's Holistic School Redesign
00:07:54
Speaker
you.
00:07:54
Speaker
I happen to be in California where we are doing a huge redesign of our schools and I serve as the president of the state board of education in California.
00:08:05
Speaker
So I'm able to be involved in that conversation about how we're going to
00:08:12
Speaker
rethink everything from the design of schools to the assessments that we use in schools to the way we conceptualize curriculum and the purposes and goals of schools.
00:08:24
Speaker
We have, you know, leadership in the state that is very focused on the whole child and really creating a
00:08:32
Speaker
a system in which the whole child sits in a school environment that addresses the needs of the whole family and the whole community, et cetera.
00:08:40
Speaker
And not everyone is in a context like that.
00:08:44
Speaker
So the strategies range from, you know, taking advantage of the impulses you can find.
00:08:51
Speaker
I think changing systems and changing policy is always opportunistic.
00:08:56
Speaker
You have to see where the cracks are, where the opportunities are, and really lean into those at the moment when they are available.
Creative Support for Progressive Education
00:09:05
Speaker
In some cases, it's going to be a subversive activity because it depends on what your context is.
00:09:11
Speaker
But one of the things that even in these huge debates that we see in the politics, the anti-CRT movement, the anti-
00:09:21
Speaker
SEL movement, et cetera, et cetera.
00:09:24
Speaker
There are ways often to connect with parents on a whole different level, like, you know, outside the bounds of the food fights at the school board meetings around what end up sometimes being shared concerns.
00:09:40
Speaker
So I think that, you know, the way in which we
00:09:44
Speaker
take advantage of this.
00:09:46
Speaker
You mentioned professional development as a context.
00:09:49
Speaker
That might sometimes be the context, but it may be that there are other contexts within which the work needs to be
Innovative School Models
00:09:56
Speaker
done.
00:09:56
Speaker
I think it is a... I was in New York City in the moment when hundreds of new small schools were being created.
00:10:03
Speaker
Back in the 1990s, the superintendent, the chancellor of the schools, put out an RFP and said, if you want to invent new schools, because that's where the factory model was, you know, deeply ensconced, bring proposals.
00:10:17
Speaker
And people did.
00:10:18
Speaker
Parents and professionals together, community-based organizations.
00:10:24
Speaker
And very exciting, very exciting.
00:10:27
Speaker
schools were developed and continue to be functioning in that city.
00:10:33
Speaker
Most of the big warehouse factory model high schools that were failing have been eliminated.
00:10:39
Speaker
They now have multiple schools in a building and in places like Ohio, you have the work that KnowledgeWorks has done around, you know, new tech high schools and linked learning and things like that.
00:10:51
Speaker
We have to look for those places and figure out how to
00:10:55
Speaker
expand, replicate, and build on the innovations that have occurred rather than sort of the returning to normal, the old normal.
00:11:10
Speaker
Look for the ways in which we can start to build that new normal.
00:11:13
Speaker
Sometimes that, as I said, might happen in professional development settings, but when professional development is designed outside the parameters of the
00:11:22
Speaker
And professionals themselves, you know, if it comes down sort of from the top, it may often be reinforcing of the old status quo.
Teacher Ownership in Professional Development
00:11:33
Speaker
Now, that's not always the case, but professionals have to own it.
00:11:37
Speaker
Teachers have to step up and own the ways in which they want to work and learn together and create together and design together what the future is going to be.
00:11:50
Speaker
You know, it's fascinating.
00:11:51
Speaker
As you're talking, I can't help but think about a situation that we find ourselves in a lot when we're doing PD, which is part of the PD has to be convincing teachers that administrators, state administrations, the building curriculum coach actually wants you to do these cool progressive ideas.
00:12:11
Speaker
will be invited in to do, for example, project-based learning or ungrading or moving away from testing.
00:12:17
Speaker
And teachers are hesitant because they believe that, for example, the Ohio Department of Education believes that none of those practices are going to work and they're going to focus on standardized tests.
Disconnect in Educational Policies
00:12:27
Speaker
Yet the exact same time, when I was in the classroom, the Ohio Department of Education came in and said that everything I was doing was super cool.
00:12:34
Speaker
This fear that at a systemic level,
00:12:38
Speaker
All of these folks are saying that you can't do this.
00:12:41
Speaker
And there's a fear from below to the top that they're going to be forced to change those practices if they go about changing toward progressive practices.
00:12:48
Speaker
It seems like there's a disconnect between what everyone should be doing and what everyone thinks each other thinks they should be doing, if that makes sense.
00:12:57
Speaker
How do you convince folks that you should even try these things out when they feel like so much pressure is against them to even
00:13:05
Speaker
trying to shift at a systemic level would be outrageous, like to even think about going that far.
00:13:10
Speaker
On the one hand, there is a need for educators to be involved in changing the rules, changing the policies.
00:13:19
Speaker
And the Ohio Department of Education, which I have worked with in various moments in time, has had to evolve with the politics of the moment.
00:13:28
Speaker
So what might have been the case at one moment in time may or may not be the case at another.
00:13:33
Speaker
moment in time in terms of how it is
Effective Professional Learning
00:13:35
Speaker
positioned.
00:13:36
Speaker
But typically there has been some encouragement from that agency for innovation.
00:13:43
Speaker
And so you've experienced some of that.
00:13:45
Speaker
I think for teachers who have not engaged in a particular kind of practice and may not have experienced it themselves as students,
00:13:54
Speaker
The professional learning piece of this is not just the presentation at a PD that here's a good idea and here's what it's about, but then you need to embed it in a way that there is a ongoing opportunity to go, you know, to go across classrooms, to go see what somebody else is doing, to plan the project together with other colleagues.
00:14:18
Speaker
Maybe it's an interdisciplinary activity that is at a grade level, or maybe it is
00:14:23
Speaker
you know, the folks in the third grade who are planning the third grade project together on their team.
00:14:30
Speaker
And then to iterate, you know, to come back together and say, here's my material.
00:14:34
Speaker
What are you doing?
00:14:35
Speaker
Oh, I like what you're doing.
00:14:36
Speaker
I'm going to bring that in.
00:14:38
Speaker
Oh, this other piece didn't work so well.
00:14:40
Speaker
Let me tell you what I'm doing instead.
00:14:42
Speaker
And we need...
00:14:44
Speaker
School administrations that are finding the space and the time for teachers to collaborate together.
00:14:50
Speaker
That is a big need in a lot of American schools.
00:14:53
Speaker
Some schools have redesigned to make time for teachers, but many are still, you know, very much into the you get a half an hour, an hour a day for individual planning, not creating the time.
00:15:06
Speaker
So that's a part of the systemic change then.
00:15:08
Speaker
Whenever we want to undertake a practice change, we also have to look at what's the system change that has to go with it.
00:15:15
Speaker
In the United States, teachers work more hours per week and year than teachers in any other country in the world directly with children.
Outdated Models vs. Modern Needs
00:15:25
Speaker
On average, an American teacher gets eight hours per week less than the average teacher internationally for collaborative planning and learning and even the time that you might need to do some work.
00:15:39
Speaker
grading or outreach to parents or students.
00:15:42
Speaker
So our days are still, again, this is factory model inheritance, you know, that you're only teaching when you're with children was sort of the notion and they pass through your classroom, you know, and you stamp them with whatever the lesson is that you are responsible for.
00:15:57
Speaker
So we've got to break that up.
00:15:59
Speaker
We've got to help get redesigned time.
00:16:03
Speaker
There are some great examples of that.
00:16:06
Speaker
I have founded something called the Learning Policy Institute, and we have created something called Design Principles for Whole Child Equity.
00:16:14
Speaker
And if you go to that website and click on Design Principles, you'll see lots of examples of how schools across the country work.
00:16:21
Speaker
are implementing these kinds of practices, including finding the ways in which you can get the time and the structures that support them.
00:16:29
Speaker
Otherwise, it's very hard to continue the work.
00:16:32
Speaker
But professional learning, it doesn't always happen just from PD, right?
00:16:38
Speaker
As we think of it, it happens when people have the opportunity to share ideas and work together and iterate on their practices.
00:16:46
Speaker
And that's what we have to be making a lot more time for.
00:16:51
Speaker
The other piece is that when people are worried about standardized tests, you know, across the country, many states have, under No Child Left Behind, were required to use standardized test results in a very punitive way.
00:17:06
Speaker
You know, there was the March 2nd.
00:17:09
Speaker
meeting those test score
Test Policy Reforms
00:17:11
Speaker
targets.
00:17:11
Speaker
And if you didn't meet your test score targets, then you would have various sanctions and penalties.
00:17:17
Speaker
And those could include, in some places, reconstituting schools in terms of their staffing, even eliminating or closing schools.
00:17:24
Speaker
It was a hugely traumatic time in American education.
00:17:32
Speaker
And many people are still
00:17:35
Speaker
injured by that.
00:17:36
Speaker
They're still afraid of what we were experiencing at that time.
00:17:42
Speaker
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, there's room for more
00:17:48
Speaker
more use of whatever the data are for productive purposes of learning and improving.
00:17:54
Speaker
But not every state has taken that approach.
00:17:56
Speaker
So it's very important.
00:17:58
Speaker
And not every district has taken that approach.
00:18:01
Speaker
It's very important for educators to be involved in shifting the policy frame that they work in, both through their associations, teachers associations that have political capacity, but also in their own districts around
00:18:18
Speaker
taking up these issues with district leaders to be sure that the uses of data, whatever those may be, are only for improvement, are only for instruction, and that there are other sources of data
00:18:36
Speaker
and learning project-based activities and exhibitions and other things that are much more useful for transferable learning that get more attention and standing in the district.
Interdisciplinary Learning Benefits
00:18:51
Speaker
Speaking to the, first off, to the structural component of this, if you have the capacity to transform your schedule and not only give teachers more time to plan, but actually put in the schedule time to do interdisciplinary learning,
00:19:06
Speaker
and time to do PBL and time to set up for like an expo night or something of that nature.
00:19:11
Speaker
That makes all the difference for those folks that already want to do those things.
00:19:16
Speaker
They're going to be super happy.
00:19:17
Speaker
Like me, we shifted to a schedule that was not only block scheduling, but had actual time in the curriculum for interdisciplinary PBL, which was amazing.
00:19:25
Speaker
I was going to say, you and others who've had that opportunity should share that on your website.
00:19:30
Speaker
You should get those schedules and how you got to them and share those tools because everybody needs those tools.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, and it's incredible.
00:19:40
Speaker
And what's cool is that the folks who maybe were a little skeptical of those practices working, when the schedule shifted and they saw what others were doing, that's all the enabling they needed to jump in to this work.
00:19:54
Speaker
Because as you've frequently written about, this is research-backed stuff.
00:19:59
Speaker
This is not hippie kumbaya.
00:20:02
Speaker
This is rigorous, challenging stuff.
00:20:05
Speaker
And the stuff that kids do when they're put into these settings is way more
00:20:09
Speaker
interesting but also intense than anything that they're going to do on a worksheet or a test or anything like that where it just, who cares at the end of the day?
00:20:16
Speaker
It's
Educator Challenges and Stress
00:20:17
Speaker
irrelevant.
00:20:17
Speaker
I can't always say that if you ask them.
00:20:20
Speaker
I think allowing for teachers just to have the time to even think about those things and organize together is a big part of this because it feels like a lot of work front-loaded when you're looking at changing systems and everybody, if they're just trying to keep their head above water, both
00:20:38
Speaker
Professionally, but also personally with everything that's going on in the world, it can be difficult to challenge the status quo and to make those changes.
00:20:45
Speaker
Something that's interesting about the latter part of what you brought up surrounding spaces that are maybe embracing like the CRT language, the anti-trans stuff, even saying the word progressive in terms of progressive education.
Teacher Shortages and Education Quality
00:21:01
Speaker
are also the same places that are recruiting military members to be teachers because there's a giant teacher shortage because they're not paying teachers anything.
00:21:10
Speaker
They're embracing that teacher as technician model.
00:21:15
Speaker
For folks that find themselves in spaces where unions are essentially abolished or perhaps even nearly illegal, it's incredibly difficult to join those, and they're teaching in spots where the kids need help and the teachers need help, but they feel lost.
00:21:31
Speaker
what do they do if they don't have that framework to support them?
00:21:36
Speaker
A lot of teachers in those kinds of settings kind of take their work underground, but it's a very challenging way to, and that's why, of course, people are leaving.
00:21:46
Speaker
If you can't do the kind of work that brought you into teaching, if you're worried that somebody is gonna sue you because you said something in the classroom that might've even been misheard, misinterpreted and reported home, I mean, there's even surveillance kinds of things going on.
Political Engagement for Change
00:22:05
Speaker
You know, people are many, many people are going to just opt out.
00:22:10
Speaker
But I think, you know, there's always what do we do at the individual level?
00:22:14
Speaker
And then there's always a political and communal set of tasks to be done also.
00:22:20
Speaker
And so, you know, the part of the task in those settings is to be working in a more politically astute way to change the context of
00:22:33
Speaker
both by who's elected and by the ways in which teachers work collectively around that.
00:22:41
Speaker
And for those who are just trying to survive, I always suggest that people find their, find your collaborators, find your community, find the people that in some moments in history and at some periods of time, you simply are able to commiserate with.
00:23:02
Speaker
And notice that all these words begin with C-O-M, you know, community commiserate, that that that notion of a community, of a communal way to be in the world is very important.
00:23:14
Speaker
It's especially important when you're in these very, very stressful situations.
00:23:19
Speaker
But there will be a moment where the where the.
00:23:22
Speaker
where the shift can come, where the where things can move and you can continue to try to be persuasive to other parents about how they can be helpful, other members of the community and not simply, you know,
00:23:41
Speaker
Deal with it on your own.
Community and Collaboration Importance
00:23:43
Speaker
Almost nothing can be done well individually.
00:23:46
Speaker
You know, there's the African proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone.
00:23:50
Speaker
If you want to go far, go together.
00:23:52
Speaker
And so whether how we operate as professionals in the school, you know, again, the old factory model with the egg crate classroom was designed to keep teachers from one another.
00:24:02
Speaker
It was designed to make everybody, you know, sort of just implement the routines that were handed down to them.
00:24:11
Speaker
Every time we break through that, every time we create more communal activity, whether that is the professional learning that we can do with each other or whether it is the political activity.
00:24:26
Speaker
work that needs to be done to create safe spaces for schools.
00:24:30
Speaker
It has to be done, you know, communally.
00:24:33
Speaker
And there are a lot of people I work, you know, I've worked in classrooms, I've been a teacher, I've helped start schools, I've also worked at the policy
Shared Goals for Children's Success
00:24:41
Speaker
level.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I try to go back and forth because you need for people who work in the policy context to understand what it is to teach and learn, to understand how it is that students are enabled to thrive, to understand how
00:24:55
Speaker
things operate.
00:24:56
Speaker
So I also work with a lot of other organizations, civil rights organizations, people in community-based organizations, as well as educators.
00:25:05
Speaker
And I do think that that's important to us as well, that there is actually a lot of shared aspiration for our children.
00:25:16
Speaker
And the more we can connect to others in our communities or in our states or in the federal space who share those goals, the more powerful we can be in actualizing them.
00:25:29
Speaker
There's two things that you said that I really want
Creative Noncompliance Strategies
00:25:31
Speaker
to highlight.
00:25:31
Speaker
At first is I hear a lot of themes there of like Deborah Meyer's creative noncompliance, you know, is kind of look the other way and do the things that, you know, work through research if you find yourself in that environment.
00:25:43
Speaker
And also Jonathan Kozol's coalition building where you gather enough support for yourself that even in the instance where you're reprimanded or perhaps even fired, you have that professional network of folks that are there to save you and move you into a space that might work better for you to begin with.
00:26:02
Speaker
And that's obviously not applicable to everyone.
00:26:06
Speaker
Not everyone can take those kind of risks.
00:26:07
Speaker
But if you can build up that political and social capital to the point where it works for you, then you can start taking more and more risks.
00:26:13
Speaker
and doing cooler and cooler stuff.
00:26:15
Speaker
And I've learned a lot from both Deborah and from Jonathan over the years, but Debbie was creating some of those small schools that I mentioned in New York city when I was there.
00:26:26
Speaker
And it all started with that.
00:26:27
Speaker
She, you know, had been a kindergarten teacher and, um,
00:26:31
Speaker
was part of a group of folks who were meeting at Lillian Weber's workshop speaking of a different approach to professional development.
00:26:39
Speaker
It was creative construction of new realities as well as a creative non-compliance where necessary.
00:26:47
Speaker
And then she started, you know, Central Park East Elementary School and then Central Park
Innovative Schools in NYC
00:26:53
Speaker
East.
00:26:53
Speaker
There was another version of it that that
00:26:56
Speaker
needed, there was another school that needed to start because there was so much demand for it.
00:27:00
Speaker
And then they grew Central Parky Secondary School and so on.
00:27:02
Speaker
But ultimately, when I was working with her, the district had given she and some other of these school creators the opportunity to start 50 schools in the district.
00:27:14
Speaker
Now, that's a big district, but that were built on these same principles and so on.
00:27:18
Speaker
And it has grown and grown and grown.
00:27:20
Speaker
So a little seed, you know, you plant that little seed
00:27:24
Speaker
that represents what you know to be true and what you know to be good for children and work with others who have the same impulse can grow in some extraordinary ways.
00:27:37
Speaker
And when you're in eras of time when others at the top may not be seeing the truth the way you see it, you may need creative noncompliance.
00:27:47
Speaker
But the moment you have an opportunity, and they do come around,
00:27:52
Speaker
then you shift to creative construction and spread the word so that there's more of it the next time there's a pushback.
00:28:01
Speaker
Self-plug.
00:28:02
Speaker
Deborah Meyer was on our podcast like 10 episodes ago.
00:28:05
Speaker
So go listen to that
Showcasing Student Achievements
00:28:06
Speaker
too.
00:28:06
Speaker
I think there's an interesting point to be made too about that, the case for public intellectualism amongst teachers, right?
00:28:13
Speaker
Both in showcasing what's going on in the classroom.
00:28:17
Speaker
So doing public displays of learning
00:28:19
Speaker
getting kids presenting, getting your community in to see what's going on in the school.
00:28:24
Speaker
Because ultimately, if you're doing these methods, kids are going to do awesome stuff.
00:28:30
Speaker
It isn't rocket science.
00:28:31
Speaker
If you give kids the opportunity to do cool stuff, they will do cool stuff.
00:28:35
Speaker
And then you can present it.
00:28:37
Speaker
And no matter how you fall politically, if your son or daughter is
00:28:41
Speaker
just did this awesome presentation or put together this awesome, you know, evidence of what they learned that semester.
00:28:48
Speaker
They don't really question about is critical race theory involved in, you know, this.
00:28:53
Speaker
They're just impressed by what their kid's doing.
00:28:55
Speaker
There's space there for co-opting some of the terminology that's been used for behaviorist practices towards progressive practices.
00:29:02
Speaker
Like college and career readiness has been sometimes utilized to say, like, put the kids in rows, give them grades every week, call it a day.
00:29:10
Speaker
But college and career readiness is teaching kids responsibility and you don't need bathroom passes for everything.
00:29:16
Speaker
You don't need to give a kid a grade for everything.
00:29:17
Speaker
You need creative, complex thinkers.
00:29:20
Speaker
These are all arguments for college prep.
00:29:24
Speaker
I found whenever we do professional development, the most common criticism we get is that's not what colleges want.
00:29:30
Speaker
That's not what high schoolers want.
00:29:33
Speaker
People don't believe that these practices actually connect with the rigor that's assumed by more traditional practices.
AP Exams and Project-Based Learning
00:29:40
Speaker
Well, let me let me encourage you.
00:29:44
Speaker
I got a call just last week from the head of the College Board, David Coleman, who wanted to follow up on a conversation we'd had some time ago about why it was so important for the advanced placement exams to begin to bring in project based learning.
00:29:59
Speaker
And they have done some of that.
00:30:01
Speaker
Some people may know about the seminar series in high school where there's two courses that engage kids in project-based learning and research.
00:30:10
Speaker
And those project-based reports and exhibits are scored for the exam.
00:30:19
Speaker
That is what
00:30:20
Speaker
the measure of learning is.
00:30:22
Speaker
And he said they've gotten good enough at that in multiple parts of the AP system that all of the APs are about to have project-based elements that will be part of the scoring.
00:30:36
Speaker
Because people recognize, and there's a lot of new research, some of it just came out of the George Lucas Education Foundation sponsored studies.
00:30:44
Speaker
that project-based learning, they looked at AP courses.
00:30:49
Speaker
Kids who engaged in projects in those courses did better on the standard exams and learned more about the broader higher-order skills that you acquire.
00:31:00
Speaker
As a result of it, we've got evidence that those kinds of activities help kids be more successful in college, et cetera.
00:31:08
Speaker
But it is beginning to take hold.
00:31:10
Speaker
People are beginning to recognize that we have to change the way we structure learning.
00:31:15
Speaker
If it's going to be meaningful, if it's going to be transferable, if it's going to be something that kids can build on and engage in the kind of workplaces they're going to be going into.
00:31:27
Speaker
you know, which are collaborative, which require a lot of self-management and self-motivation, working with knowledge that hasn't been discovered yet and technologies that haven't been invented yet and solving the big problems that we haven't managed to solve.
Future Challenges in Education
00:31:44
Speaker
which determine whether the species will still be on the planet in a few decades.
00:31:51
Speaker
So I think there's like, this is a moment where lots of people are sort of having to conjure with a very different context for human existence.
00:32:01
Speaker
I'm glad to hear that.
00:32:02
Speaker
I'm also very skeptical of the college board, to be honest, but I hope it's all awesome.
00:32:07
Speaker
I hope it all works out.
00:32:09
Speaker
Well, the fact that they reckon whether they do it well or not, I hope they will do it well.
00:32:14
Speaker
Those two courses I mentioned really are amazing.
00:32:17
Speaker
And they are really about the kids choosing the topics that they will inquire into and so on.
00:32:23
Speaker
And teachers learning how to evaluate them with rubrics, et cetera.
00:32:27
Speaker
But even if they didn't do it well, the legitimization of the practice of project-based learning is an important step forward for us.
00:32:38
Speaker
I think it gets to the call, too, for both the micro level of how do we do schooling better to the more macro level of how do we preserve human existence?
00:32:49
Speaker
And I think that there's interest in addition to the pandemic bringing about calls for reimagining education and seeing the cracks in that
Progressive Teaching for Democracy
00:32:58
Speaker
regard.
00:32:58
Speaker
It's also allowed us to see general issues of equity, climate science, you name it, pretty much everything that could possibly be graphed having a problem right now.
00:33:10
Speaker
These progressive teaching methods aren't just to increase test scores, they're to create a more democratic society where kids are able to critically think,
00:33:17
Speaker
about the world around them and build a better future.
Advocating Progressive Education Methods
00:33:22
Speaker
And in addition to teachers rallying together to talk about progressive teaching methods, to teach in this way, to advocate for better pay and
00:33:30
Speaker
professionalism and all that kind of stuff.
00:33:33
Speaker
There's also kind of a sub message there of advocating for being able to teach kids to change the world, which I think might be scary for more conservative folks because they hear that and think it's like propaganda in terms of teacher and teachers navigating that political landscape.
00:33:50
Speaker
How do teachers stand up for themselves within their organizations or really without their organizations and talk about this stuff without scaring people away?
00:34:03
Speaker
Where people are so propagandized to hear even the term progressive and they look the other way and be like, that person is not on my team.
00:34:11
Speaker
How do I even go about starting to talk to them about this stuff without just radio silence on the other end?
00:34:17
Speaker
I think choice of words is very important.
00:34:20
Speaker
And in my experience, working in the political space and the policy space is just like teaching.
00:34:27
Speaker
You have to think about who you're talking to and what they bring to the conversation, what their perspective and starting point is, so that you can kind of find a way to meet in the exchange.
00:34:40
Speaker
Very interesting study by...
00:34:44
Speaker
I think it was the Fordham Foundation, which actually has Ohio roots and is conservatively leaning.
00:34:51
Speaker
And they looked at the fact that
00:34:56
Speaker
the term SEL has been weaponized.
00:35:00
Speaker
And many people have been told, you know, cell is the devil, but they don't even know what it is.
Social and Emotional Learning Focus
00:35:06
Speaker
And so as people have looked at conversations with, or when you ask parents on both sides of the aisle, what do you think about the various specific elements of social and emotional learning?
00:35:21
Speaker
You know, learning how to, you know,
00:35:25
Speaker
sort of reflect on your own feelings and figure out how to behave responsibly and how to get along with others and how to develop a growth mindset and, you know, be able to persevere and be resilient, all these things.
00:35:40
Speaker
When you talk about that, there is almost 100% agreement across all of the people who are surveyed or in focus groups on this that, yes, I want that for my child.
00:35:52
Speaker
I think the school should be doing that.
00:35:54
Speaker
So the label can be weaponized, but the actual content is actually a place of common ground.
00:36:03
Speaker
So when we talk to folks, maybe we don't use the term progressive if that has been weaponized in a moment in time or the term SEL or whatever, CRT is another, there's so many of these.
00:36:15
Speaker
But we talk about the actual values, the actual practices, the actual work.
00:36:22
Speaker
And there's often a lot of agreement about that.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's very much the, what do you think about public schools?
00:36:28
Speaker
Oh, they're terrible.
00:36:28
Speaker
What do you think about your local public school?
00:36:30
Speaker
Oh, they're great.
00:36:31
Speaker
Like there's this huge separation between perception and reality.
00:36:36
Speaker
Very much like that Christopher Rufo campaign of weaponizing language and
00:36:40
Speaker
We're running short on time.
Policy Progress Post-Pandemic
00:36:43
Speaker
What's next?
00:36:43
Speaker
So based off the work that you've been doing, what change do you see on the horizon?
00:36:48
Speaker
What hope can you provide for educators and school reform and reimagining and creating something new down the road?
00:36:56
Speaker
Coming out of the pandemic, there have been several places where a lot of policy ground has been achieved.
00:37:03
Speaker
So there's a lot of support, as I said, for investing in social and emotional learning and whole child practices across the country.
00:37:12
Speaker
Many states and the federal government are investing in community schools, which are schools that are more connected to the community and community organizations and
00:37:21
Speaker
supports for kids, mental health and physical health and social service supports, but also collaboration with families, collaboration with community-based organizations and a community-connected project-based inquiry-oriented curriculum is actually part of that.
00:37:39
Speaker
And so along with things like restorative practices, so we're not
00:37:44
Speaker
you know, kicking kids out of school and putting them on the school to prison pipeline, etc.
00:37:49
Speaker
So a lot of investments in that, both from philanthropy and from the federal government and some state governments.
00:37:56
Speaker
There's a lot of work going on on this question of
00:38:00
Speaker
moving towards more inquiry-oriented learning and project-based learning.
Redesigning Education for Equity
00:38:05
Speaker
Assessments are beginning to change.
00:38:07
Speaker
More than 25 states are involved in trying to change their assessment systems.
00:38:11
Speaker
And there's a lot of conversation with the Federal Department of Education about how to create space for innovation in which kids are engaged in some project-based activities that are part of the way we think about understanding what they're learning.
00:38:26
Speaker
And enabling that to count.
00:38:29
Speaker
There's also a lot of conversation about how to move our accountability systems and conceptions away from a notion that accountability exists to punish schools or to hold up the shame and blame campaign.
00:38:46
Speaker
But in fact, that we need to have measures of what opportunities to learn are available to students.
00:38:54
Speaker
And then how do we equalize resources and funding and opportunity as the basis of accountability?
00:39:01
Speaker
And so that's also very much an active conversation the Department of Education put out.
00:39:07
Speaker
some guidelines and encouragements to states to think about that and bring new plans to be approved by the department.
00:39:15
Speaker
So I think that there's an impulse to rethink.
00:39:21
Speaker
It's going to take people in local communities doing the work there and then sharing and spreading what they've done with others and learning from one another.
00:39:32
Speaker
community that you build through your work, the website, et cetera, is a place for some of that sharing.
00:39:38
Speaker
And then it's going to take in some of the work that I and others do, that kind of sharing across state superintendents and people in the Congress.
00:39:49
Speaker
And that is also happening to a greater degree.
00:39:53
Speaker
And then we've got to work up and down the system with each other so that
00:40:00
Speaker
high quality teaching and learning so that the kinds of empowering and equitable education that we want inform the way in which the system gets redesigned.
00:40:13
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:40:17
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
00:40:20
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
00:40:25
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
00:40:31
Speaker
Thank you.