Transcript
Speaker: Hello, Emily.
Speaker: Hi, Rafa.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: I'm well.
Speaker: I'm a little tired.
Speaker: It's a 7-ish p.m.
Speaker: on a Monday.
Speaker: I'm keeping you up past your bedtime.
Speaker: I feel like you go to bed at like 8.30, I'm guessing.
Speaker: That would be a wise time.
Speaker: I tend to go to bed more between 9 and 10, sometimes 10.30.
Speaker: Sometimes 11.30.
Speaker: I bet you wake up early.
Speaker: I do wake up at six pretty regularly.
Speaker: And you don't even have a baby.
Speaker: I h ave a baby that makes me get up.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't have a baby.
Speaker: That's just, you have lots of babies at work.
Speaker: But they don't live with me.
Speaker: It's an important caveat.
Speaker: Well, for those who are not familiar, I'm Rafa.
Speaker: And I'm here with my co-host and one of my best friends of life, Emily.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is Pedagogy of the Distressed, a podcast where we talk about things that distress us.
Speaker: Maybe they're not distressing, but they're on our mind.
Speaker: But it rhymes with oppressed.
Speaker: But we are often distressed.
Speaker: Even if we're excited, it's distressing us.
Speaker: We're like, I want to do more, right?
Speaker: It's like, oh my gosh, I'm so distressed.
Speaker: I really want to talk about it.
Speaker: Woo!
Speaker: Woo-hoo!
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So for today's episode, it's a continuation of the last episode, which to briefly recap, we were talking about assessment, how the use of assessment has been used often to control schools, to control teachers, to control kids, and talking about different ways of assessing teachers.
Speaker: and even asking different questions of why do we assess and should we even assess, right?
Speaker: And so we talked more in the context of classrooms and today we're gonna explore a little more of this idea of quality programs because at least in New York City where I teach in preschool, it's a constant thing.
Speaker: We need quality early childhood care.
Speaker: And so there's been a lot of initiatives to measure what quality is,
Speaker: But everything falls a little short.
Speaker: And it has actually been very frustrating and distressing for me at times to watch it.
Speaker: To watch it happen and at times be subjected to some of these quality standards that can feel very narrowing and actually subvert quality.
Speaker: But then it's the question, what is quality, Rafa, then?
Speaker: I've taken a thinking lens to it.
Speaker: And then thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there's just been this thinking lens protocol inspired by this book.
Speaker: Not inspired.
Speaker: Directly comes from this book, From Teaching to Thinking by Anne.
Speaker: It's right next to me.
Speaker: Ann Pello and Margie Carter.
Speaker: I was going to say Ann Carter and Margie Pello.
Speaker: Ann Pello and Margie Carter.
Speaker: And they have this approach to thinking through children's play and making sense of it.
Speaker: And I've been playing around with using it in school and also just using it to think through other problems in my personal life.
Speaker: Not even problems, just things that are curious to me.
Speaker: And in this case, this conversation and this podcast.
Speaker: And so just to briefly summarize the steps of the protocol are first to start with how, what moves you or what feelings does a moment stir in you?
Speaker: And then followed by exploring, you know, what's the point of view of the child when thinking of children's play?
Speaker: But in our case, we're going to talk about, you know, what's the point of view of society?
Speaker: What is society trying to figure out?
Speaker: And then moving on to, you know, what in the environment influences children's play?
Speaker: But for us today, I think we'll be focusing on what in the system's influence what's happening now, which you've talked about a lot in the past, so we may not dwell too long on that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then continue to considering more perspectives, be more explicit about the theories we're coming from, and then landing on some reflections and a next step.
Speaker: So we're going to solve everything today.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Solve it all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm excited for this because it's not something I, I, this is something that Rafa really came with on his mind.
Speaker: So I would love to start with like a little background.
Speaker: So when we talk about, cause last week in our part one episode of this, we were talking about how do we assess or, you know, even assessments, a loaded term, but how do we determine what a child is?
Speaker: is learning about what they're curious about and how we can build the next learning experience for them based on where they're at in the moment we're assessing them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We talked about all the different ways schools have approached it and are approaching it and ways that we wish that they would.
Speaker: And often we talk about assessment being too narrow because we rely on tests and things that are pre-made standardized and
Speaker: in an effort to get a gauge about how we can gauge learning in students across many, many schools and many, many districts and states.
Speaker: And so when we think about moving from assessing the child to the program, I'm curious because I think maybe people don't really think about this, but like, what does that mean?
Speaker: Why do we need to do that?
Speaker: What is the point?
Speaker: Yeah, why do we need to do that?
Speaker: Why do we need to assess programs?
Speaker: Maybe talk about how is it usually done?
Speaker: So when you tell me, like, what is the why?
Speaker: Why do we need program assessment?
Speaker: Oh gosh, why do we need program assessment?
Speaker: I do think we need a sense of like, I think it's ultimately how well are we answering that question for ourselves as a society about how,
Speaker: this is really what we want for our future and for now, especially for our children.
Speaker: Is what?
Speaker: Like the programs, like design, like the curriculum design, like what?
Speaker: Well, I don't know.
Speaker: It depends.
Speaker: It's just, but that's the question to me.
Speaker: And that's, that's like, and then from there.
Speaker: So, but what's distressing to me is that I think that assumption, that why question is often swept under the rug.
Speaker: It actually has to do with a quote actually from the book.
Speaker: Maybe I'll start there because, um,
Speaker: This really got me.
Speaker: It really spoke to me because I've thought this, but other people have thought about this way longer than me.
Speaker: And I've already... Let's have an interesting distillation of it, which is really what we're... Yeah, interesting distillation.
Speaker: So here, this is from page 280.
Speaker: from a section by Margie Carter saying, telling the stories that matter.
Speaker: I'm going to read a bit.
Speaker: So education scholar and visionary Peter Moss says that when we examine, quote, contrasting stories, confronting each other, offering listeners conflicting alternatives, unquote, we begin to critique our practice in necessary and fundamental ways.
Speaker: He challenges us to scrutinize the dominant story that has shaped early childhood today.
Speaker: The story that investing in early childhood will lead toward our national success in a fiercely competitive global economy.
Speaker: And I will just say in parentheses, I think this is how all of education is viewed from the dominant narrative in the States, at least.
Speaker: Moss says this story tells us, quote, invest early and invest smartly, and we will all live happily ever after in a world of more of the same, only more so.
Speaker: Reassured by this story of early childhood education as a solution to some of our most immediate problems and anxieties, it is tempting to sign up to it rather than ask difficult questions about what sort of world we want to embark on, the hard, messy, and political task of clearing the deepening slow road.
Speaker: I never actually read that word out loud.
Speaker: Slow, slaw, S-L-O-U-G-H, slow, of inequality and injustice that breeds so many of the social problems that early childhood education is supposed to solve, end quote.
Speaker: And so I feel like right now, assessment of programs and of schools in general, evaluations, I kind of want to say now, evaluations are based on this narrative that is named or unnamed of investing to reap more profit, more benefits in the future.
Speaker: And what you and I, or what I'm reacting to,
Speaker: The thing that moves me or that distresses me about assessment evaluation tools is that they're clearly based on this narrative.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But they're not.
Speaker: Schools should produce.
Speaker: And even if we're thinking about early childhood, which reminds me that that can be like two and three year olds, like two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Any infants.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anybody that's not in school.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Children should be learning the skills that they will need to eventually be a productive worker, because we're the idea is if you invest early, you'll have a more productive person by the end of their life.
Speaker: mandated schooling right in the United States.
Speaker: And so it really, it really grinds my gears.
Speaker: It is really, it really, speaking of machines and capitalism, it, it's like, I just don't believe, I realized that I just don't believe that that's fundamentally what education is about.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: And it really gets to that for me in terms of why the whole attempts to evaluate programs at the moment really feel like something to defend myself from or defend ourselves from rather than embrace, which again, we all want quality.
Speaker: I just want to mean the same thing.
Speaker: And I don't think I do.
Speaker: So what distresses you, if anything at all, about quality?
Speaker: Reading that.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I think it's distressing that I hadn't, I've thought about that before, but I haven't thought about it for a long time.
Speaker: And sometimes when you've thought about something for a long time, it distresses you anew.
Speaker: And even though it's like, I think a lot of us find different ways when we're, when people are aware of the way systems perpetuate racism, inequity, harm, oppression, right?
Speaker: Nothing is surprising, but it's still surprising.
Speaker: somehow evokes a feeling similar of surprise, right?
Speaker: That's like probably what distress is, right?
Speaker: And it's like, wow, I haven't thought about, we get so caught up in the day-to-day practices and it happens, like you said, prepping people, prepping, teaching, treating, approaching education, specifically K through 12 education as investment in a future workforce, which is what I think people mean when they say future society, quote unquote, because what we really mean is people who are valuable to the labor market.
Speaker: is that we only value people for what they can produce.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I, I just am distressed every time I forget that that's the point of this system is to squeeze as much out of us in terms of being productive as possible.
Speaker: And I think that I, a lot of that's like,
Speaker: my racial, like, like my racial positionality as a white woman, it's like, I've been very like benefited from this system.
Speaker: And so I've, I've been taught to buy into it that like the more you do and the more you put out, the more you will be rewarded.
Speaker: And obviously people in different positionalities for me have a very different and more in tune perception of the myth of meritocracy.
Speaker: Um, and I think that, um,
Speaker: realizing all the things that have disturbed me about early childhood can be encapsulated in that disturbing realization that what's happening.
Speaker: I've always like been pissed off about the push down of like college readiness into fucking kindergarten, fucking preschool.
Speaker: I'm like, why the fuck are we taking away center and play-based learning to do skill, skill-based quote unquote, like doing big like scare quotes here to do like serious skill-based teaching, you know, which is probably why I get pissed off about science of reading shit because it's like trying to push down like,
Speaker: People need to get these reading skills as early as possible.
Speaker: You know, in my mind, I can parse out that some people really do that with really good intention because they want people to have the skills to access the written word.
Speaker: But it also pushes, it's a push down of academic quote unquote knowledge, which is coded terms.
Speaker: We're talking about Eurocentric ways of knowing, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Center around things that have been sanctioned by the Western Academy, right?
Speaker: It's really not even the full Academy that includes things like
Speaker: sociology, critical race studies, literature, the arts.
Speaker: It's really things that are going to be productive and useful.
Speaker: Anyway, sorry, I'm going on.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: I think we'll talk, we'll definitely talk more in that and like the space for that around like different perspectives, right?
Speaker: So I do want to revisit that.
Speaker: in terms of the rationale, right?
Speaker: Because I think there are things we need to respond to in terms of rationale and practicalities, right?
Speaker: And how it fits together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think like what, I guess the core thing that we're finding is that so much of you, what we are so distressed by is like when we come to a conversation and we're like, okay, we're all here for the equity meeting and then we start talking and we realize that there's a completely different definition of equity that's based on
Speaker: the myth of meritocracy, for example.
Speaker: And like the idea, if like we all have the same conditions, we can all get ahead, right?
Speaker: We can all, when a lot of us are coming with the perspective that, no, we need to question the way we dole out the pie, right?
Speaker: We need to make the pie bigger.
Speaker: We need to like figure out how, like why some people get more of the pie than others, right?
Speaker: And that's our vision of equity.
Speaker: And so I think like that, that's what can be so disturbing.
Speaker: You can come to a meeting about early childhood and be like, we need to expand early access to early childhood education.
Speaker: And some people think it means having more like academic, having standardized testing, like push into preschool.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like having standardized systems to measure what preschoolers know.
Speaker: And so just round way about like, we don't have those wide conversations.
Speaker: We don't talk about why we need this and what we're trying to measure in our assessment of programs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it brings me to like, you know, what is society and maybe what are different aspects of society trying to figure out here?
Speaker: Because there's, I'm going to, I guess, simplify a bit, but there's people who are really invested in capitalism as it is in the States.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I guess arguably around the world who definitely have no shame around education being for
Speaker: profit and good workers and there's other people in other communities who want liberation and don't want that to be the only thing i think lots of people want to be productive in communities right right that's not at the expense of the earth and each other and i guess in a broad sense those are kind of the two things the two big camps i see um
Speaker: And they do have some assumptions that are pretty opposed to each other.
Speaker: And so I think I'll shorten it to the hyper-capitalists are really into, yeah, just like do whatever you need to do to get those test scores to make sure the kids are reading so that, not so they can enjoy reading, but so they can be really strong workers and go to college for that reason.
Speaker: Whereas I feel like many other communities,
Speaker: Who, yeah, like they want their children to read.
Speaker: I want my kids to read.
Speaker: I want my kids to write.
Speaker: Because it's empowering to them and it's enjoyable to them and it's in and of itself seen as very useful to them.
Speaker: And can be used for more liberatory means than simply writing a report, which again can be useful.
Speaker: And so I think that's what two camps in society are figuring out.
Speaker: But what do you think?
Speaker: Yeah, no, that kind of encapsulates.
Speaker: That's a nice review of what I think we've been distressed by in the past about thinking we're going...
Speaker: realizing like, because when you're asked to develop an assessment of a program, you're asked to say, okay, well, we need to figure out a metric for measuring the success program.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And more like validity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If it's doing its job or not, basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because, um, I think the idea of programmatic assessment or school assessments, right.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: have resulted in things like standardized testing becoming really the norm.
Speaker: It's like people I don't think really appreciate that standardized testing as it is today measures the success of a school district and the way that teachers teach.
Speaker: That's how it's treated more than the success of an individual child, even though the child ends up feeling vulnerable.
Speaker: the brunt of the pressure because we're measuring their performance on a test.
Speaker: But ideally what it's supposed to do is just like measure what they know so that we can say, Oh, kids in the 20 to 21 school year did this well on this test versus other years versus other district in the same year, you know, and it's supposed to measure the success.
Speaker: That's like, that is programmatic assessment, but people think of it as individual child assessment because that's,
Speaker: how it feels in school and nobody explains to children on a wide scale or in a serious way what they're doing in this type of thing.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And I think like we see that that's a collapse of the why.
Speaker: We don't talk about...
Speaker: if you teachers don't even know it's on the test we don't know what we're assessing when we give them this assessment we just trust that it's going to test the knowledge that we identify as necessary or valuable talking pineapples yeah and like we talked about the test i don't think we would see that and so i think a lot of us feel i didn't feel like i had any really valuable assessments of
Speaker: my teaching or of my school as a whole, right?
Speaker: Their performance, there wasn't, we didn't have means for that.
Speaker: And we're always trying to find ways to do that.
Speaker: And I think it's, it's difficult.
Speaker: What about your, what does program assessment look for you look like for you in the past or in other experiences that you've had?
Speaker: Lots of rubrics.
Speaker: This means quality.
Speaker: This doesn't mean quality, very black and white way.
Speaker: So the block should be here and labeled like this.
Speaker: We don't have a label on every single thing.
Speaker: you're not a strong program.
Speaker: Things like that.
Speaker: I've had more open-ended rubrics as a teacher that have been helpful.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, the reflection part of it is very, you have your mid meeting and then you reflect and okay.
Speaker: And you don't talk about it again until the end of the year.
Speaker: And then you either get hired or you don't.
Speaker: like it's not really it doesn't really feel like it's meaningfully for reflecting i thought it's the reflection is more just like reflection is good so we should do it here right right and but this is really just like a way for organizations to reward people who they want to reward and push people out who they want to push out
Speaker: Because if your evaluator likes you, they'll figure out a way to give you a good... Oh, 100%.
Speaker: And I've been on the benefiting end of that.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I've been affecting the evaluator and the evaluated.
Speaker: And I let personal relationships affect both.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess going back a little bit to what really gets me about this emphasis on just quality, I feel like it's based on a lot of lack of trust.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like this, like, oh, we really need a valid assessment because we can't trust anybody in those schools, right?
Speaker: And I wonder, well, anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself because I have another way of thinking about it, right?
Speaker: But trust is a huge part of it and I see a lack of it.
Speaker: And we've talked a good amount already about the systemic issues that influence why assessments are how they are.
Speaker: All that has to do with money and foundations and people who decide things who are not educators.
Speaker: There's also this idea of like, I want to take a moment and just consider other perspectives.
Speaker: And specifically, I wanted to start off with this idea that, you know,
Speaker: there have been situations where a parent talks to me and it's like, listen, like I'm thinking of this school and one is like really like militarized and I don't know how I feel about it, but it's safe.
Speaker: And then my other local school and my public school is, it's just not safe.
Speaker: And so, and no learning happens there.
Speaker: And so, like, those instances, I wonder what, you know, one says, because for me, like, yeah, on that level, you do what you have to do in that sense.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't think then that means that the militarized, strict, no holds bar thing is the systemic answer though.
Speaker: And so does that make sense to you?
Speaker: And if it does, how do you think through that?
Speaker: Like in that way, you're acting, if a parent comes to you and asks for your opinion on two different schools, like you're playing the role of an informal person.
Speaker: right?
Speaker: A program evaluator and trying to measure the merits of one versus the other.
Speaker: And like sometimes looking at, yeah, I guess like what I'm hearing is like sometimes like it can, a school might hit all of like the negatives that you would advise against or that you see is not being,
Speaker: liberatory or what, I don't know your criteria for what makes a good school, but like, I can guess.
Speaker: And I think that sometimes even though it might, a school might be all the negative things you would look for.
Speaker: It's like, there's one thing that just trumps everything.
Speaker: And if it's safety and like, right.
Speaker: I was going to say safety, physical and emotional safety for sure.
Speaker: You go back to that, even though that's like Eurocentric, like there are many,
Speaker: different ways of understanding that there's like, if your basic needs aren't met and one of the most basic safety, then you're not going to, that doesn't matter.
Speaker: Like it has to meet that threshold first.
Speaker: And so there are hierarchies, there are like, you know, priorities and things we have to recognize as like the basic things you need to meet.
Speaker: I will say what's interesting having worked in schools that are unsafe is that like, you know,
Speaker: for the children, for the teachers, for all of us together.
Speaker: And we were still doing evaluations of like the academic learning without thinking about, have we met this threshold for basic needs?
Speaker: So that's missing.
Speaker: In this school feel safe.
Speaker: I would guess that a lot of the kids would say no for a lot of different reasons, you know, as of the way teachers, teachers treat them because of the way that like, you know,
Speaker: teachers treat them this, the kids act out, you know?
Speaker: So there's like inter, there's so many levels and we don't have good ways for talking about it because schools often are only evaluated for their academic achievement.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it's like, yeah, it's, um,
Speaker: I think there's been a narrowing of what we assess in a lot of schools and it focuses on our kids learning.
Speaker: And we assume that I think the mistake is when we see, Oh, they're not learning.
Speaker: We evaluate the program.
Speaker: We, we evaluate the, I sorry, I should say the curriculum.
Speaker: We evaluate the curriculum.
Speaker: We evaluate the,
Speaker: You know, the number of meetings I had about objectives and are we structuring our meeting?
Speaker: Are we structuring our daily classes around objectives in the same year that we were having fights in our hallway every day?
Speaker: You know, like where kids felt unsafe because kids, there were so many kids with emotional trauma that were acting out on each other, you know?
Speaker: Did we address the fights in the hall?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Did we stop and pause and recognize that children are being injured in school?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: We just talked about, are you teaching objectives?
Speaker: Do kids know what page they need to be on in their textbook?
Speaker: That was all the professional development support we got.
Speaker: So this narrowing of what schools are for has really made a hyper focus on one aspect when really it is to be
Speaker: We need to think about more things than we often are in a lot of school or program evaluations, I think.
Speaker: More focused at the same time.
Speaker: It's interesting because it is narrowing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yet it's also feels very unfocused on what's important.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So like to your point about safety is not even talked about.
Speaker: And then when safety is talked about, normally very punitive measures, not things that get more to the root of things.
Speaker: And then again, you get to the issue of them, what are the role of schools and are schools supposed to take on that burden?
Speaker: And are schools then taking on the burden of trying to meet basic needs for kids in a very ineffective way, even no matter how well people try, right?
Speaker: which then gives an excuse to the wider society to not properly invest in healthcare and housing and food security for the community because they can say, well, it's because that school just isn't a good school, not because it deflects from those more fundamental issues, right?
Speaker: So it's really insidious to me in that way.
Speaker: And I think a lot of, like, sorry, no, I cut you off.
Speaker: No, go ahead.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: I was just saying, I think a lot of, I think the way that teachers are made to feel is that when we evaluate schools or how they're teaching, we don't evaluate the school, right?
Speaker: As like an entity or like a system, we evaluate teachers and what they're doing in the classroom.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and teachers aren't, obviously I know I've never worked in a district level.
Speaker: There's probably a lot of evaluation things that happen that I don't see at the district level or at an administrative level.
Speaker: But, um,
Speaker: the tools that we most often talk about is like how students perform on certain tests, right?
Speaker: And like things that are student outcomes are things we use as tools to evaluate a school system.
Speaker: And the closest thing to a student in a school system is the teacher, right?
Speaker: They're the... And so it's easy for a lot of people in power to say,
Speaker: Oh, teachers aren't doing their job.
Speaker: Oh, we need to change the curriculum.
Speaker: If the curriculum was changed, then kids, if we found the perfect way to teach math, then all kids would learn math without thinking about is a child coming into school.
Speaker: And that means like walking in the door, ready to learn, walking through the halls, feeling safe and ready to learn, and then like able to sit and function in their classroom environment, ready to learn.
Speaker: And they might have those conversations in other places.
Speaker: As a teacher, I've not been part of those in a very serious way.
Speaker: And it often just comes down to, are you having your one-on-one meetings to assess student learning?
Speaker: Yes, are you conferring?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Are you being, we talked about faithful to the curriculum and we don't talk about, and I think a lot of people, and even in conversations when I've had, I see other teachers saying, oh, it's because this child's hungry.
Speaker: They're coming in, they're not ready.
Speaker: And I've thought,
Speaker: I've been guilty of this thinking, oh, well, you're outsourcing the issue.
Speaker: We need to solve that issue in school.
Speaker: We need to give them breakfast then.
Speaker: And then if we give them breakfast, they can learn.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's like, no, there's so much trauma that comes along.
Speaker: And I don't want to overuse trauma because I think some people throw it around.
Speaker: I don't mean to throw it around, but like, there's so much more that goes into like a child not coming in with adequate nutrition.
Speaker: Then you can't just feed that,
Speaker: that hole in their stomach and like expect them to, it's not fuel.
Speaker: You know, it's like a child is not a robot.
Speaker: It's not a machine where if you, if it has all the food it needs, if it has all the sleep it needs, it's going to be ready to learn.
Speaker: It's like, oh, they also have feelings and emotions and thoughts and like interests and passions and fears, you know?
Speaker: And it's like, we don't adequately look at students and then a student body as a collection of a lot of complex things.
Speaker: We want to isolate them.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: increasingly and I should say historically to measuring how well they do on certain academic tasks right when yeah yeah yeah I'm thinking about a lot of things do you want to slow me down and tell me what you're thinking well I was looking up I wasn't looking at you for a second but I was listening trying to find something I couldn't find it but I guess I'm kind of moving in a little bit now into the reflection and like a next step thinking about calling our what's the protocol called
Speaker: The Thinking Lens Protocol.
Speaker: We can give it a catchier name.
Speaker: Clearly, it's not catchy enough.
Speaker: We're getting it.
Speaker: It is an acronym.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: Thinking Lens.
Speaker: Thinking TLP.
Speaker: TLP.
Speaker: Tulip.
Speaker: But I think about what are the intentions and or values that I would want to drive changes in assessment and how we assess things.
Speaker: And one thing that's in this book, From Teaching to Thinking, it's some paraphrasing, but it's like
Speaker: It tackles this question for a second about why do black and brown kids not get like co-created learning spaces that are reserved for like mostly white kids and affluent children.
Speaker: And they talk about like the value that's clearly put in those high affluent schools, financially affluent schools is attention on children and relationships.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like a lot.
Speaker: And it's not that teachers on an individual level don't put a lot of effort into relationships in public schools, especially like economically oppressed districts and populations.
Speaker: But structurally, they're not encouraged to.
Speaker: They're always pushing up against mandates and things that force them to burn out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I would want this idea of how can we structure assessment evaluation so that it really encourages and allows for communities, Black and brown communities, to get that same attention and care to who they are as people.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: and to really be in relationship with others and be able to slow down.
Speaker: As long as schools are super pressured to do well in tests, and if my intention is to more hold the relationships and the attention and slowing down,
Speaker: then the speeding up and the urgency is actually a sign of a low quality system and program.
Speaker: It's like, why the heck is this how it is?
Speaker: Like, that's not conducive.
Speaker: And I've learned through my work with Lucien and Cedar, Cedar Lansman and Lucien, what's Lucien's last name?
Speaker: I'm sorry, Lucien, if you're listening, I love you.
Speaker: From Relational Uprising, just like the strong, the relationships can hold so much complexity, including cognitive complexity.
Speaker: And so you can learn more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I think I would want to nudge next steps for policy in terms of thinking of quality of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: how are the structures in a school and how are the structures outside of school that affect the school developed in such a way that they do allow people to get the basic needs met and then also get the attention and care that they need to, to thrive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, wow.
Speaker: I,
Speaker: What's that organization?
Speaker: That sounds really interesting.
Speaker: I haven't thought about relational teaching in that way.
Speaker: Can you just repeat the name of the organization?
Speaker: Relational Uprising.
Speaker: Relational Uprising Network.
Speaker: Ryan, my partner, I'm telling you, but you know who Ryan is.
Speaker: For those who don't know, my partner, we just celebrated 13 years this week.
Speaker: Yeah, look at you.
Speaker: It's a teenage relationship.
Speaker: It's a teenage relationship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: he had a friend who invited him because you do it in a group and you normally do it from an organization but we didn't have an organization so she reached out to Ryan she reached out to some other friends and Ryan was like I think you'll like this it was during a pandemic it was through Zoom and I've just ever since then I'm still working with Cedar and Lucy and I'm still collaborating with them and their work is very powerful
Speaker: but yeah one big takeaway from their work is just how that focus on relationships allows for a lot of complexity including complexity of difference complexity like in emotions complexity with like you know
Speaker: It's like people, that's a big buzzword like in education in general.
Speaker: People are always like, well, if you have strong relationships, you have a better class.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And people don't think about what that means.
Speaker: Means.
Speaker: Even like there's two perspectives on relationships and it's like.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I'm going to make a big leap.
Speaker: but there's a bridge I will build.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I can't wait.
Speaker: Just like a good song.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So the, okay.
Speaker: Take me higher.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The crescendo.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The thing about relationships, right?
Speaker: Like that really is,
Speaker: right?
Speaker: The essence of so much work, right?
Speaker: Is your relationships with your coworkers, your relationships with people that enable you to get the job.
Speaker: So many people only get jobs because of their connections.
Speaker: It's not only, it's like they have the skills, they have the capabilities to do a job, but what enables them to get the interview to get like, you know, the knowledge about a job opening is their relationships with people.
Speaker: Like what,
Speaker: people call networking.
Speaker: And I think a lot of us like get...
Speaker: Iced out by the idea of networking because it's a commodified perspective on relationship.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: When like really what it comes down to is like, are you getting good vibes off of someone?
Speaker: If you get good vibes off of them, which can be like coded for a lot of different things, but like, let's like, that's how like relationships start is like, you get a good feeling from someone and because they get a good feeling from you.
Speaker: They're like, Hey, I would love if you like came and worked at my job.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Why don't you like,
Speaker: you know, apply for this opening or because, hey, like I knew your cousin and they did something really important for me.
Speaker: I owe, I feel like I owe them something.
Speaker: So I'm going to open the door to this person I don't know and trust that this friend of mine who's your cousin will, is like vouching for your identity, right?
Speaker: So much.
Speaker: And then this reminds me of like, I had friends in business school at the same time I was in my PhD program who the whole time they were in business school, their time was spent on networking trips.
Speaker: They were going to like,
Speaker: you know, faraway places on these, like they had like often like multiple trips a semester where, and I was like, why are they going to like beach week or why are they going to like ski week?
Speaker: And it was always like to build connections because half of what business school is, is like, yes, you learn a lot, but you're also networking.
Speaker: You're meeting people that are going to take you, introduce you to some new phase of your career.
Speaker: And like, we hide that and mask it with like,
Speaker: a lot of gatekeeping with tuition and with like access to schools, but like really what things come down to why people, it's not the only reason, but the one way that power consolidates itself is through relationships, which is kind of the like weird seedy underbelly and the dark, you know, or I should say like the like power from relationship isn't bad.
Speaker: And it isn't.
Speaker: And it isn't.
Speaker: It's just demystifying.
Speaker: We need to demystify that.
Speaker: How,
Speaker: power can build right and it's not it isn't just through what we can offer each other and what we can do because if it was a meritocracy if we could just build our skills and become good enough to like be recognized for our value then a lot more people be recognized for their value because they're all there are a lot of very hard-working people and there are also a lot of very hard-working people who are vulnerable and have needs and they have friends that look out for them say that's most of them
Speaker: I think everyone, most of the hardworking people, most hardworking people are everybody.
Speaker: And like, everybody has some like gooey part of them that like, when you hit it, like opens them up to like needing, needing support, needing time, needing right.
Speaker: Faith meeting, or even like circumstances happen in their life and they need help.
Speaker: relationships to carry them through it, right?
Speaker: They need the support of others.
Speaker: And we don't talk about that because so much, again, of the way this system functions is that if you invest enough in yourself and you learn enough and you fill your brain up high enough with all this knowledge, you will be a valuable person.
Speaker: commodity in and of yourself by yourself, just how smart and capable you are, right.
Speaker: For whatever, you know, thing you're seeking out in the future.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And really what we've seen is that people have gotten jobs or have gotten opportunities to do things that
Speaker: Not because of like anything they really accomplished, but just because of who they know and like, you know, who they know and who they've built trust with and who they've like, you know, people feel like even if you haven't done anything, it's like, I believe in you.
Speaker: And like, I have like a good relationship with you.
Speaker: And so I'm going to like take a look and like see what you can do by offering you this opportunity.
Speaker: Anyway, I don't know.
Speaker: The bridge I'm going to try and make like thinking about what we're talking about is that
Speaker: we sell a lot of kids a false bill of goods that like, if they just like, and like, I don't know.
Speaker: It's like, we like, if we had faith in, it's just like funny that like kids go to business school, like they go to the best business school in the country to learn how to network, how to build relationships.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's like, do we teach things like that?
Speaker: Do we teach like, you know, do we enable people?
Speaker: Do we model it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like capacity and like teach people that,
Speaker: society only functions because of interdependence because of like relationship.
Speaker: Society only functions because of interdependence.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a shift.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We, we definitely push an individualistic idea.
Speaker: Like you need to make yourself as smart as possible to compete against everyone.
Speaker: That's like, Oh no, honey.
Speaker: No, like we only like survive because of other people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We don't push other people out of our way.
Speaker: And it's a sickness of the way that we're living to, we're taught to compete against each other.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like be better than everyone and get schooling to be better than everyone.
Speaker: And we instill that in people with like,
Speaker: unhealthy perspectives on competition that leave other people in the dust and only reward the top three, you know, whatever, and whatever we're talking about anyway.
Speaker: So that just like that, I think like thinking about relationships in that way is power.
Speaker: I had internalized a lot of really negative, not negative, but like ideas that relationship building is soft, right?
Speaker: It's not, it's not powerful, important work in the same way that other academic skills are.
Speaker: That's something I want to sit in and think about myself, like going forward.
Speaker: That's something I want to change and reflect on and think about how can I actually like enable people to see that all the work they do in like relationships isn't just like, it is,
Speaker: invaluable and in fact necessary to the webbing of society right and to being human and being human yeah no I feel that yeah I guess if I were to just to to land for me somewhere in terms of a next step I'm going to go on two levels
Speaker: One of my roles at Mi Casita is to construct the evaluation structure, right?
Speaker: And I want to revisit what we're doing, which is we ask questions and we reflect on them and we talk about it.
Speaker: And it's a dialogue.
Speaker: And yes, there is my experience and my professional judgment that really informs the quality of the conversation, right?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And I want to lean back into that a little more at Mikasita as the next step of, okay, I'm going to have a conversation about are we showing a strong image of children?
Speaker: Do you feel like you're showing a strong image of children?
Speaker: I think doing the stinking protocol in and of itself and showing a change after the protocol is in and of itself something that is an indicator if you want to call it that.
Speaker: But throughout it all, it's supposed to be within a web of trust.
Speaker: It's not the tool in and of itself that does it.
Speaker: It's using the thinking tool in the context of a team that trusts each other and that believes in what they're doing.
Speaker: It's the same tool in another team that has really deep trust relationship issues.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: is it's not going to work right so for me like that's my next step on the micasita level and then on the wider level like if someone were to work at more schools is our conversations like this happening period and are they happening a meaningful amount of times throughout the year where people feel like it's in for like people feel like the last conversation wasn't too long ago right so me can see that we have these conversations every week
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're not necessarily framed as formal evaluations, but can very easily point and document that, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I think this is maybe in an earlier episode, but it's just really hard for me to imagine a program that's really poor quality on many other indicators if they're consistently reflecting and talking and being real with each other and personally accountable to each other and making changes in response to feedback and in response to thinking.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: be really worried about a school, which is a lot of schools because that's just how, like, especially with the curriculum as it is, they don't, they do the same thing every year.
Speaker: They don't reflect on changing, you're not looking at your kids in front of you, right?
Speaker: So those are my, those would be my next steps on the more policy or like if I were to make a bigger assessment, right?
Speaker: Which I know I'd run into issues with validity and stuff and that's something I want to sit down and the whole concept and statistics, right?
Speaker: But I don't know.
Speaker: I'm pretty confident that's the direction I'd want to go.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Was that the whole thing?
Speaker: Was that the whole cycle?
Speaker: That's the whole thing.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That is really... I love that as a tool.
Speaker: And I think it's like bringing it back to thinking about trust.
Speaker: It's like, why don't we trust people to have these deep conversations?
Speaker: You know, to have like...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like to reason why they're making the decisions they are and to think and then evaluate, because I also know that when, whenever I'm evaluated or whenever like my performance is gauged just through a rubric and then I'm told after by like a quote unquote objective observer about how I did, it's like, I don't feel like I get to be
Speaker: part of that conversation because even though I am a reflective critical person and could offer some critique of what I do, but I think like I look to other people for thinking about relational work, you know,
Speaker: I would hope we can move to a place where program evaluation doesn't just like a read of someone like telling you, this is what you did wrong.
Speaker: You did wrong.
Speaker: This is what you did wrong.
Speaker: And this is what you need to do instead.
Speaker: I would hope that we can just, you know, even harkening back to some of the stuff we talked about, about dialogic teaching, you know, just like, I would hope we can get to a more dialogic place for a lot of this and just trust that,
Speaker: if there's a lot of people in the room having a dialogue, you know, that are seriously engaged and using like evidence from like their teaching in terms of like, exactly.
Speaker: Based in reality, based in reality and their reference, not just ideas, their reality, right.
Speaker: Like talk about illustrations.
Speaker: Well, I saw a kid do X, Y, and Z. And so it made me think this.
Speaker: And then it, you know,
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, and I think the role of standardized assessments will be at a very high level, and it would be at a very sampled level.
Speaker: So let's look at a statistically meaningful amount of schools, thousands of them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then if those schools are implementing what we're talking about, I would be, I would, I would imagine there's a lot of good, that's they, things would go well on a standardized longitudinal overtime assessment.
Speaker: And we work on like getting like measure of like how students are learning based on like family learning.
Speaker: things like family surveys and like not like how do families feel about the education their children are getting?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: How does community, how after like, it needs to be more longitudinal.
Speaker: It needs to be more deeply relational itself.
Speaker: Like how we collect that data.
Speaker: It can't just be on the test because wow, there's so much of like who makes the test with the questions they're asking.
Speaker: It's like, if,
Speaker: People don't have a say as to the stuff that we're measuring, you know, because of what a student needs to know.
Speaker: People in communities don't have says on like what goes on a test that they're testing.
Speaker: We just trust a test to make it.
Speaker: But we, very few people understand that there aren't very many people making that test.
Speaker: It's not like a huge,
Speaker: right number of people were basing that off of it's a few people who developed a test and then tested it on a bunch of yeah but Pearson ate it Pearson ate it I can tell you that um yeah so I I feel like I've landed in a pretty good place it's obviously really more conversations but
Speaker: If you're listening and you have more thoughts on this or you know of people doing this work in academia and or in communities, let us know.
Speaker: I mean, we want to see more examples because in New York City, I know lots of cool stuff is happening, but...
Speaker: we don't talk to each other as much uh and often it's cross sectors not just in schools right or places that are school education adjacent so as always you can email us at pedagogy of the distressed at gmail.com it's in the description uh and yeah we'll see what's next what are you thinking emily what's in your brain
Speaker: I'm just like settling into that realization about relationships and I'm like wanting to think about maybe something off of that.
Speaker: I'm going to sit with that and think about where it leads me.
Speaker: And so I'm just fighting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: About.
Speaker: We could.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What were you going to say?
Speaker: You had an idea.
Speaker: We, I mean, we could do the thinking protocol with that.
Speaker: That can be the thing we respond to again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, more thinking to come.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: More thinking to come.
Speaker: And I'll have to loop back then on my next steps.
Speaker: That's kind of how it's supposed to work.
Speaker: Cycles, loops, maybe not in the next episode, but some point in the future.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, with that, Emily, thank you.
Speaker: Have a wonderful night.
Speaker: You're doing the best.
Speaker: Those babies are lucky to have you in their care circle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Love you.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
