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Mary Beth Hertz asks "are you a content consumer or creator?"
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
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Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast, where we empower and inspire ownership of learning. Sponsored by Mastery Portfolio, hosted by Star Saxton and Crystal Frommer.
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In each episode, we will bring you engaging conversations with a wide variety of educators, both in and out of the classroom. This podcast is created for educators who want to learn more about how to make the shift toward learner-centered spaces for their students, schools, and districts, or education at large. The Learner-Centered Spaces podcast is a member of the Teach Better Podcast Network.
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Get ready to be inspired as we dive right into the conversation with today's guest.
Guest Introduction: Mary Beth Hertz
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We are so excited to have Mary Beth Hertz on our show today. She's taught young people in Philadelphia since 2003 and has been at the forefront of educational technology since 2010. She's the author of digital and media literacy in the classroom, practice classroom application, and the executive director of Walkabout Education, an organization dedicated to building experiential learning schools. Welcome to the show, Mary Beth.
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Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk about all things student centered. We're excited to have you here too. Could you share with us a defining moment from your educational journey?
Connecting Globally through Technology
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Sure, I think I had to think about this a lot. I have to think about this like just thinking about um all the different moments that you have in a career that's about 20 years long and but a thing that came the thing that came to mind um was the ISTE conference I attended my very first one
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in 2009. So I had joined Twitter right after finding out about the conference. And it was my first experience meeting people in person that I had been talking to online. And it was really the jumpstart of connecting with people all over the world who were engaging in this new ed tech thing and publicly sharing their ideas through blogs and things like that.
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um And so for me, that was a really pivotal moment in my career, being able to reach outside the walls in my classroom and of my school to connect with other educators around the world. It's funny you should say that because honestly, around I guess around the same time is when I started talking on Twitter as well. And I just remember feeling like I had finally found a community of people who understood what I was trying to do in my own space.
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And it was so refreshing to like, you know how stifling it could be sometimes when you're in a school that doesn't necessarily get what you're trying to do and then you're around a lot of people who get it.
Support and Growth as a Tech Educator
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Definitely, definitely. Yeah. um and And helping and having that community there to also um to bounce ideas off of, to just let the sense of being um that sense of community and belonging, but also that, you know when you're and for me at least at that time, you know I was teaching in a computer lab and I was the only person in the whole building doing that job. So I really didn't have anybody else to talk to about what I was
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trying to um to do with young people and people who um and being able to connect with people who also didn't have a fear of technology was exciting for me um and also just the the approach right that we're gonna put this tool in the hands of Kids to create rather than where a lot of the tech was and still is today um You know, hey, we're gonna have them do this like reading program That's gonna have them get better at tests was kind of where technology was um so yeah, it was really exciting to to connect with people and
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So to that end, can you describe for us what technology can do to create a learner-centered space? What does that look like, feel like, sound like? um like how How do you think that shifted when we started bringing technology into that equation?
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For me, um and I still actually say this to my own kids, um it was the idea of thinking about whether you are a content consumer or a content creator. And I hate like the term content creator, and it's kind of like gross now in some ways, um for me you personally. hate um Because it's just it's can mean so many different things and it can also um You know, there's well, I won't go into that part of it. But for me the idea of being able to Create things and then share them was really exciting. So what I Found um was that technology was able to break down the walls of my classroom so when my students were blogging and
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um I could share it outside and they could share it, right? So I could send it to families. Families could read what they were saying. They could interact with each other. um And it would teach them how what that what that interaction looked like um in a kind of, you know I guess, I don't know if you can still say the term walled garden, but within a walled garden um with the hope that they take those skills with them when they leave that walled garden um so that They have the skills to be able to interact with other people um yeah on those platforms. And so I think the the technology for me was this, okay, you're going to actually create something, share it, and then interact with other people around that same content or that same idea. So for me, um that back then was exciting. It's still exciting.
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I think, though, it's been been fascinating to watch the idea of the content creation and the purpose of it shift a little bit. So I think it was more for me, the the focus was um you know about sharing ideas with other people and learning from other people. And you know there's been a lot more um focus now on likes and on ah views and on those kinds of things. So it's been interesting to see that shift.
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I think you're such an interesting guest to have because you have this overlap in your Venn diagram of technology education and also experiential education, which i I don't know that I always see that overlap. Can you tell us more about how you're using technology and experiential education in another centered space? Yeah.
Technology in Experiential Learning
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so um My current position at my school is, as I should say, everybody kind of wears many hats in schools. But I teach young people, I teach ninth graders in a technology called like a boot camp. So they're all ninth graders. This is their first year. at the For many of them, it's their first year at the school. um And so
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I have that kind of lens, but then I also support all the experiential learning, um service learning, um internships, all kinds of um individual, we call it ILPs, individualized learning program. um And so one of the things that's interesting is is seeing how when you have young people who you're trying to support in connecting with the community, connecting with people outside the classroom, it's that same conversation we were having about technology serving as that connector so you know even things is like how do you how do you make a resume how do you write a professional email how do you um make sure you're checking your email so when an opportunity comes your way you're responding um and you're doing that in a timely way um but also we have um I'm part of a learning collaborative here in Philadelphia
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of different schools that do experiential learning with, or I shouldn't say do experiential learning, but but support experiential learning that students are doing. And um we use a tool called Emblaze where young people can look for opportunities, they can ah select opportunities, and they can actually ah use that tool to check in. and like So if they have an internship, they can go there and check in and um and kind of show their advisor and show people that they've been there and how they're doing and what they're doing um that when they're there. So I think that there's, what I love about it is it's like the real world skills of technology of the kinds of things that we assume that these young people know how to do and they just don't. So we think they use their phones all the time. They're on the technology all the time, but there's these things that they need to be successful in the adult world that we just, they just aren't learning in a traditional class.
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So how do you assess that you know in the experiential space?
Student-Centric Assessment and Planning
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um If they're they're out and about and and doing the real world activities, how would a teacher assess that the students are learning the concepts and skills they need to learn? Yeah, and it is a little a little tricky when you talk about assessment in this so in that kind of setting. um For me, I want to think, OK, in the program that we have, right um what are the students' goals?
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So when they start their, um specific specifically their ILP, I can talk about um their their individualized learning program, they have to come up with an inquiry question. And the ILP is supposed to kind of be the answer, right? It's helped them answer that question.
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So they're going to be asked to reflect. They're going to be asked to share what they're doing. They're going to be asked to make connections between what they're doing and that inquiry question throughout the course of the year. And they will also have a final presentation, right? But they have to share the overall, um their overall takeaways and their kind of self-assessment and their growth and all those kinds of things.
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So I think um that assessment piece really ties in to the the the student themselves. And so my hope is that they're not doing it for a grade, they're doing it because they have goals, right? They have goals that they want to achieve. So I'm hoping that teachers When they're looking at how to assess this kind of stuff that they're when you don't just throw a kid into an experience right you want to be meaningful you want to be thoughtful and you want it to be meaningful even with service learning the students are choosing their topic they're choosing the organization that they're going to be on.
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they're going to be connecting with. And the assessment comes in your process, right? did you Did you meet all the checkpoints of the project to make sure that you were ready to run your project? did you did your Was your plan successful? Did you complete the project? Did you meet your goals? And so I think those are um the kinds of assessments in experiential learning that um and that i that I look for and that I try to implement. um And the interesting part is a lot of this is through technology, right? So it's, again, those technology skills. if you if you don't If you're not able to send that professional email and get the information that you need, you're not going to be successful in that step of what you're trying to do. So they're kind of connected in that way.
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I love what you're describing. i just I think that kids learn by doing and that some of the traditional way we do school is just challenged for learners, I think.
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So if if somebody came to you, Mary Beth, and they were like, I wanna do what you're talking about, what advice or next steps would you would you recommend they take to just start moving the needle in that direction? Yeah, and I think i think advice is is tricky because everybody's situation is different, everybody's in a different place as to what they're trying to achieve.
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So I would say if you're a teacher in a classroom um and you're in that like traditional setting that most of us are in, the question I always ask myself is like when I'm planning, it's like, okay, what are the students going to be doing? And I always make sure that when I'm looking through a lesson, I'm looking through a unit that I'm looking for action students are going to be taking.
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um And thinking about how the topic or whatever I'm teaching matters to them and how they can bring in their own ideas and skills and questions and things like that. So the design like in the the front loading the design of what you are doing with young people matters a lot. And i and as far as the experiential learning piece,
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experiential learning doesn't have to be kids ah you know leaving the building and going and doing internships and things like that you can bring people in as well so we had for service learning last year you know we had ah some folks go out of the building but we also had some partners come in and do presentations with the with the young people or even like zoom calls and things like that they got a virtual tour of an animal shelter so I think um if you're trying to Create that more learner centered space. It's about Having those conversations with young people about what they're interested in um In the right in the beginning front-loading all of those things so that you can make those connections throughout the unit and throughout the experience um and also connecting them with those resources with those things that are real right and that are actually in the community and meaningful because they're I mean
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meaningful because they're not just school, right? They're something that actually is real and not and real and not just like, oh, I'm gonna sit in a classroom and I'm gonna do this thing within my walls. I'm gonna bring things in the classroom or I'm gonna go out of the classroom and and see how this looks in the real world.
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I love that you offered a suggestion that it's not necessarily going outside the classroom walls that you can bring guests in and because I think that makes it very accessible for some schools. And um I worked at a school that was really, really big into experiential learning. And I think we had a nice balance of bringing folks in from the community and also going out into the community. but Of course, there was always room to grow in that area.
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um So thank you for sharing all of that. Is there anybody along your journey that you would like to shout out who's influenced you?
Influence of Walkabout on Educational Views
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um I think the my current work that I'm really excited about with the experiential learning is really influenced by my own experience. So I attended a alternative senior year program back in the 90s, not to date myself. um to called Walkabout. I'm now the executive director of that organization um because I feel so strongly about the impact that it had on me as a young person. So on Eugene Lebewald was the one of the founders. He was my one of my
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leaders in the school when I was there, but they you know they gave, we did internships, we did service learning, we did all these, we did backpacking trips, we did all of these experiential things that um let us, you know gave us a launch pad into the adult world. One of my favorite ah of the five key assumptions of Walkabout is you can do more than you think you can.
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And I carry that with me even into my classroom of thinking about how am I helping young people understand that they can do more than they think that they can. So that that that was a really big, um that program and Walkabout was a really big influence on on me. Fantastic. We're going to include a link to Walkabout and the show notes and we'll also include a link to your website. Is there any other place where listeners could maybe engage with you online?
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um I'm mostly on LinkedIn and threads. um I have an X account, but you won't see me there that often. But I'm at MBTeach on on ah threads and on X, um and you can find me with just my name on LinkedIn. Well, thank you so much. This has been really helpful, I think, for so many the educators, and no matter what kind of school they're in. and So we definitely appreciate your time.
00:16:29
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I really appreciate you having the conversation. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. If you'd like any additional information from the show, check out the show notes. Learn more about Mastery Portfolio and how we support schools at masteryportfolio dot.com. You can follow us on X at Mastery for All and LinkedIn in our Mastery Portfolio page.
00:16:54
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We'd love for you to engage with us. If you'd like to be a guest in the show or know someone who would be an inspiring guest, please fill out the survey found in the show notes. And we'd love your feedback. Please write a review on your favorite podcasting app.
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okay