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Ann Klotz says education is not only practical, but also deeply idealistic
91 Plays6 months ago
www.annvklotz.com
https://x.com/AnnKlotz
https://www.instagram.com/AVKcle/
Shout outs to
-Laurel School faculty and dept. chairs led by director of teaching and learning , Megan Weiskopf
-the good work on One School house - Online school for girls
-Well Schooled
Music by AudioCoffee: https://www.audiocoffee.net/
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast, where we empower and inspire ownership of learning. Sponsored by Mastery Portfolio, hosted by Starr Saxton and Crystal Frommert. 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. Get ready to be inspired as we dive right into the conversation with today's guest.
Guest Introduction: Anne Klotz
00:00:45
Speaker
We are so excited to have Anne Klotz on the show today. She is head of school at Laurel School, where she is also a drama and English teacher. She inspires confidence, agency, and voice in girls. She's also the founder of the Laurel Center for Research on Girls. She's committed to mentoring women interested in school leadership. Thank you for being on our show today, Anne. Thanks for having me, everybody.
Anne Klotz's Leadership Journey
00:01:11
Speaker
I'm so excited. So are we. in In that spirit, can you tell us a little bit about your journey? How did you get to where you are now? What was the moment? Oh my gosh, what a great question, Starr. So I'm a career up through the rank school teacher, head of school. um I had a great mentor um who, ah when my own daughters were little, she said to me, I was tired of being a college advisor. She said, Ann, now it's time for you to be a headmistress.
00:01:42
Speaker
And I said, oh, that's so silly. You know, my kids are little. How would I even do that? And she said, I'll never forget it. She looked right at me, straight in the eye, and she said, if you wait for the fates to align, you'll never do anything with your life. And I thought, holy cats. And she was both a mentor and a sponsor for me and put me into several searches. um And I ended up in 2004 at Laurel School, which is a magnificent ah historically all-girls school with a co-ed pre-primary, but we do throw the little boys out when they're five.
00:02:16
Speaker
um And it was one of the greatest decisions I could have ever made. And it was um definitely encouraged by someone who took a real interest in me and my career and my leadership abilities. She, like so many women, I think she saw in me things I hadn't particularly seen in myself. And that is part of why I'm so committed to to inspiring women to leap and trust that the net will appear. I
Finding the Right Fit at Laurel School
00:02:44
Speaker
am really intrigued by this story. It's not unfamiliar as I too have sort of been in a position like the one you just described where someone took an interest in my career and an opportunity presented itself sometime
00:02:59
Speaker
I don't know if it was before i I had the confidence to believe that it was for me as well, but ultimately ended up following the leadership rabbit hole for for a bit. um So what I'm curious to know a little bit more about, when when that conversation happened, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about how you knew that the school you chose was the right one for you based on your passion, beliefs, philosophy, and how that ties into learner-centered spaces. I think our listeners would appreciate that. Sure. So I am, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am girls' school born and raised. I attended the Agnes Erwin School for 13 years. I believe that great girls' schools are crucibles for girls to develop voice and agency,
00:03:49
Speaker
and to have courage ah to dream big. At Laurel School, we talk about dream dare do as a mantra. um So I did a number of searches before I found Laurel, and I had what the French would call a coup de foudre. When I walked through the front door, I thought, oh boy, This is the right school. Now remember, I'm a drama teacher by training. I have deep trust in my own intuition. But I recognized in Laurel some of the things I loved in my own girl's school and at Chapin where I taught for 20 years.
00:04:25
Speaker
And it has been an extraordinary privilege to lead a school that is committed to learner-centered spaces because great girl schools are about empowering girls to rise up and use their gifts for good and give use their own voices to make change and to make the world better. And if those all sound super lofty, it's because they are. Because at its best, education is not only practical, but also deeply, deeply idealistic. We
Empowering Girls in Leadership
00:05:00
Speaker
want kids to stretch and take risks and dream more solutions than we have right now in our complicated world. And Laurel ah is that school for me.
00:05:12
Speaker
I love that. I i i am wondering, so I have never been a part of a gender specific program. I've always been in co-ed learning. So what I'm wondering is, does being in a gender specific space like an all-girls school shift the way you think about learner centered spaces and are there aspects of an all-girls school and developing this lunar-centered space that empowers them that could be different than a co-ed one because of its genetic makeup.
00:05:46
Speaker
It's such a great question. um And the the research is, um I would say, inconclusive. But this is what I think. Sometimes I worry that it's like, does a fish know that she's in water? Because so much of my life has been spent in um historically girls' schools. um What I would say is that at our school, every leadership position is held by a girl. Every captain of a team is held by a girl, you know, all the way down the line. And so when my own two daughters who are graduates of our school went off to college, co-ed colleges, they both returned home astonished at how reticent some of the women were in their very fancy colleges ah to speak in seminars, to seek out professors for office hours, to say, hey, I'll be in charge of that.
00:06:37
Speaker
The two of them, I think, felt extremely confident, not arrogant, but definitely certain that their voices mattered and that they had a place at the table. So I think professionally, obviously, this is a belief of mine that girl schools um at their very best and not any school is right for every child. I'm really humble about that. um As our ideas about gender evolve, I would still say in this country, men and women are not yet on a level playing field. And
Impact of School Uniforms
00:07:08
Speaker
so historically, girls' schools still have a reason to exist. um But I also say sometimes to prospective families um that in the lion world, it is the lionesses that teach the cubs to hunt.
00:07:24
Speaker
And in a sense, the metaphor of raising up powerful young women to use those gifts for good is really important to me. And sometimes I think that while we'd like to believe kids are not um wildly influenced by social media and advertising and um all sorts of media, they are. And so in our school, one of the things the kids say to me every year is, don't ever change our uniform, Ms. Kotz. And I say, why? You never wore your uniform correctly the whole time you were here. And they'll say back, yeah,
00:08:01
Speaker
But it takes everything off the table in terms of what we look like. We know that at Laurel, you care more about what we think than what we look like. And I think for many kids, particularly in ah middle school and high school, um being free of judgment in terms of ah romantic relationships or heterosexual romantic relationships is freeing um and allows kids to think that what they're doing is more important than what somebody else is thinking about how they appear. I agree
Arts and Sports in Education
00:08:35
Speaker
with that. I've taught at a girls school here in Houston for many years and one of the things that stood out to me the most was sports. um I'm the mom of a student athlete who's a girl and um she goes to a co-ed school currently and
00:08:52
Speaker
There's many times the boy sports are getting the attention, they're getting the prime times, they're getting the resources. And um it's just interesting that at all girls' school, the girls' teams get all the resources. It's so true. so I never even thought about that, but of course you're right. and um And I think it's really important for girls. You know, I'm an arts educator by training. um I believe ferociously in the importance of the arts and the importance of athletics for girls. And what I love about both arts and sports is that you go to practice and you work hard over and over again. And you go to play practice or play rehearsal and you work hard practicing it over and over again.
00:09:36
Speaker
I think um I was thinking about this with learner centered spaces. As a writing teacher, I worry that revision is at the heart of a writing practice. But independent schools in this country with ambitious kids who are taking packed schedules and really going um for ambitious college placement. Time is an enemy to revision. And what I love about athletics and arts is that you've got time to practice the skill set over and over again and if you will to come up with the goods either in a game or a championship or a performance and that's really good um skill building for kids. um I think
Learner-Centered Education
00:10:20
Speaker
it's ironic that both you know play productions and sports are generally outside the boundaries of our academic day but
00:10:28
Speaker
the practice that one wants, I guess you could say, well, look, and they get to start writing in kindergarten and they keep writing up through 12th grade. I take that point. I get it. It's the same in math that obviously kids are learning and growing and spiraling. But in the writing workshop, I teach at Laurel for all ninth graders. so um I've gone much shorter with my assignments in order to give the girls an opportunity to revisit them after a couple of weeks have gone by. and really think about that craft of revision, which is hard even for me as a writer to look at a piece right away and say, well, what would I do differently with it now? So that's a great luxury. And as I'm listening to you speak, Anne, as a former writing teacher myself, um in our school, we were a publications themed school. So I ran the print media slash online media outlet.
00:11:24
Speaker
And part of what we really tried to do as a part of that education is have those learning opportunities during the day and not just as an after-school thing so that we did have the opportunity to empower student leaders to be providing feedback. And the class itself had the fluidity and structure of allowing kids to be in very different places at very different times. which of course is a hallmark to a learner centered space as far as I'm concerned that all kids shouldn't be doing the same thing at the same time. They should be exactly so I totally agree that especially when you're putting on a play or um musical theater in particular when I've worked in schools like
00:12:12
Speaker
It's so time consuming, but there's so much learning to be done in those revisions, as you put it, that instead of adding more and more and more curriculum, it's almost like taking the time to truly craft something with the practice and the feedback and then teaching different lessons through those revisions at different times is a much deeper education as opposed to just trying to turn out paper after paper after paper instead of like really fine tuning or crafting um learning in any one particular way. I think that is, I actually think you've nailed one of the big tensions in American education.
00:12:56
Speaker
um You know, that sort of ah content being king versus what we know is important is also learning how
Balancing Content with Skill Development
00:13:05
Speaker
to learn. And I was thinking um this morning, I was thinking about what are the ways that I've learned over 43 years of teaching. um to be I think when I started I thought that teaching was my telling kids everything I knew and fortunately I've had really great kids in classes with me over four decades and I have learned that that is actually that old-fashioned sage on the stage
00:13:31
Speaker
has very little place um in really great teaching and learning. um But i was um I do think we, certainly in my early years as an English teacher, we taught a lot more content than we do now. And um I think it's OK. I think kids are absorbing lots of lessons in lots of ways that they didn't 40 years ago. And we have to be smart enough to figure out how to leverage ah social media, other forms of media, and hang on to what's most important about learning and writing and thinking and risking. But as you were talking, Starr, I was thinking about making plays with kids. and
00:14:13
Speaker
a number of times in my life I've developed full-length works with groups of of girls and actually a couple of co-ed groups too. And the learning that goes on when kids are excited about a particular period. My girls in New York City and I wrote a play about the French Revolution um inspired by a woodcut in one of their European history textbooks. ah where a bunch of fish wives and housewives are marching on Versailles. All those kids got fives on the AP ah World History um exam, and they all came back to me and said, this is because we wrote Revolution, Miss Klotz. And I think, again, when kids are invested in what they're doing, when it matters to them,
00:14:54
Speaker
There is no stopping them. And their learning, their research, their willingness to say, wait, we want to be historically accurate. What? What were the undergarments? You know, they were asking questions I hadn't even thought of. And it was one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had as a teacher, where all I did was help create the conditions and then let the kids soar. So to follow up on that, I love the authentic assessment of using the theater to learn history and um they're being assessed on it at the end, but that wasn't the point of the whole thing. The point it was the production, but they happen to get all the content.
00:15:34
Speaker
So my question for you, and you probably, Star and I hear this, you probably and have heard this, when I'm talking to a teacher, just helping them, coaching them, I get pushback of, well, I can't do things like that because I have too much content. We don't have enough time for projects. We don't have enough time for student-led activities. ah What would you say to somebody who has that belief at this time? I would gently say baloney. um I probably wouldn't say actual baloney, but I would say, gosh, let's talk a little more about the pressure that you're feeling and some strategies that actually are about
00:16:15
Speaker
kids leading their learning. um i You know, I do think my ninth graders and I, we're going to write a blog about this next year, that group work is the scourge of most high school kids' experiences. They pretty much hate it because I don't think we as teachers structure it really well for them. And so the kids did a huge riff for me in the spring. I wish I'd recorded them. I was laughing so hard. But they talked about how, you know, either one kid takes over and somebody else is a slacker and somebody else tries to do as little as possible. um And it really reminded me that we think as teachers, oh, great, I'll put them in groups and then they can just go. But that work like group projects takes a whole lot of work on the back end for teachers to set up.
00:17:01
Speaker
I think the content is real. i think um I think we overvalue content. And I'm curious about why we do that. And I'm curious about the pressures that come to us from higher ed or from um structures like AP. ah that continue to over-prioritize content. But
Teaching Collaboration and Curriculum Evolution
00:17:25
Speaker
really when a teacher says she doesn't have time for this or he can't possibly do that, what they really need is somebody to be a resource and a coach and a guide to say, yeah, you can and I'll help you. um I think we don't do enough of that. I think I wish we did more saying, hey, let's band together. You're teaching one section of eighth grade history. I'm teaching another. How could we join forces in our planning and think about doing some things differently? We all are creatures of habit, right? So we get into the pattern of how we've taught things before. It's why I love teaching different grade levels and different um different subjects for me. I've always gone back and forth pretty equally between English and drama. But I do think people get tired and they get overwhelmed.
00:18:13
Speaker
And that's where the leaders in a school, the department chairs, the directors of teaching and learning, Laurel has an exceptional director of teaching and learning, a woman named Megan Weisskopf, who um I think most of our faculty would walk through a fire to have her working with them to develop really learner centered spaces. I think we need to support teachers, never more than in our post COVID time. And I think it's part of why I've always been a teaching head. I never want to forget what it feels like to be in the trenches with kids at 245 on a Friday afternoon, right? We can't ever, administrators who forget the purpose of school and forget kids, I think are at their peril. That's my my personal little homily on that. but
00:19:01
Speaker
I've only ever worked for teaching heads and I've only ever been a teaching head. so And you've said so many things that i deeply like that deeply resonate for me. um The group work thing, I read something a while ago about collaboration and our inherent thinking that the same way we think it's, like in my brain, a lot of people with metacognition and reflection assume that students inherently understand how to do these things, which they don't. And collaboration is the same thing. Just because kids have been lumped with kids their own age for all this time doesn't mean they know how to effectively collaborate and learn together.
00:19:45
Speaker
And your point about um how these things need to be structured and planned and taught, like it's almost like we have to do many lessons on different ways to do actual collaboration so that kids could, take first of all, see the value in it, understand the why. um Too much the time, it's almost like we lump them into those groups, as you said before. um Sometimes it seems like It's because we're told we have to instead of really sharing the learner experience of why it's important to learn those skills and why it's also important to sort of not
00:20:26
Speaker
um kind of divide and conquer the kids who start assigning roles to each other and then don't interact with each other until the very end. That kind of defeats the purpose of what collaboration is really supposed to be about. So just having that idea was one of the things that you said that really resonated. And then this other piece you say about coaching teachers. I work with teacher teams all the time. That's kind of how I spend my full time. and Teachers really need permission to work together to skate away from the specifics as it pertains to content. I think going back to your question about why content is king, a lot of times states are still
00:21:15
Speaker
um very much controlling the narrative with their exams, especially at the secondary level. And if it's not the states controlling the exam, there are textbook companies that are very invested um monetarily, financially in making sure that their curriculums change every time the wind blows and that there's new stuff for folks to spend money on. I really don't think that there's ah like a hard, fast reason anymore why we cling to curriculum this way, especially with how much content is free content is at our fingertips and how the skill set that kids really need to get is how to curate, um understand, and critically absorb, question,
00:22:02
Speaker
you know and and research information that's out there instead of us just deciding on a textbook, giving it to them, and then limiting what they're allowed to see and how they're allowed to interact with it. So I
Addressing Bias in Schools
00:22:16
Speaker
i really appreciate what you just shared. And I guess you know if you have an opportunity now to shout out people you think do that really well, um that you would like us to share with our listeners. We'd love for you to do that. I mentioned Megan Weiskoff, who is our Director of Teaching and Learning. um I feel like our department chairs are working really hard to think about um
00:22:42
Speaker
that balance between what you say, content and skills. I just love what you just said about mini lessons around the why of collaboration. I do think we assume that kids would understand and we ourselves sometimes think we all are on the same page. We've been talking a lot recently at Laurel about shared vocabulary. We're in a early childhood through 12th grade school. And, you know, there are terms that teachers throw around where you, I would have trust that you would know what I meant, but you might have an entirely different idea about that concept or that idea that, you know, term. So I think another person I really admire in the educational landscape is Brad Rathgeber, who is the
00:23:22
Speaker
executive director of One Schoolhouse. um I happen to be lucky enough to be a founder of One Schoolhouse. Some years back, it was originally called the Online School for Girls, and we were exploring at that point online education long before this thing called a global pandemic showed up, um which really put One Schoolhouse in a great position to be able to help schools um manage what it was like to deliver coursework um virtually and I felt really grateful that we were already launched on that journey. um i you know I read a lot and I think a lot about learning and teaching and
00:24:03
Speaker
teachers and kids and I think 43 years in I haven't gotten tired yet and I keep being astonished by meeting really smart people who are thinking about teaching. I think your point about textbooks is spot-on and I think it's a real privilege in an independent school that we don't necessarily, um we're not necessarily bound so much to textbooks. But I was also thinking about what you said, that in historically girls' schools, one of the things we started working on, even when I first started teaching in the early 80s in a girls' school, was the representation of girls and
00:24:41
Speaker
people who were not white. And I would still say as a world, we have a lot of work to do. um I think one of the real jobs of ah ah a school is to teach kids to discern bias and to think about who's benefiting from the way this story is being told. um Just at dinner
Anne's Teaching and Leadership Philosophy
00:25:02
Speaker
last night, we were talking about the ways in which Germany has reconciled their own horrific and tragic past with ah with real intention versus some of the work in this country where I feel like we don't want to look really at the legacy of what it was to enslave thousands, millions of people. Or even more recently, we were talking the other day about the Native American um children being ripped from families and sent to boarding schools. so you know As a nation, we don't really want to be clear-eyed and take a hard look at
00:25:36
Speaker
what our own legacies are. But I laugh because sometimes at Laurel, the girls say, Ms. Klotz, does everything we read have to be about a woman or by a woman or for a woman? And I feel like, listen, kiddos, wait till you get out into the world and you realize that the women's stories are not the ones that you are always gonna hear. So of course it's a balance, um but it's about offering kids lots of opportunities so to look for themselves. Remember that old adage we used to talk about doors ah mirrors and windows? I don't think it goes out of fashion to think about how are we showing children their own experiences reflected back to them? And where are the gaps? What are the stories we're not talking about?
00:26:19
Speaker
And Anne, oh, sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say cast by Isabel Wilkerson. We've had our, um I think our juniors have read it and we've done a lot of grown up reading groups on it at Laurel. And again, I also don't want white girls feeling guilty for being white. So we have a whole lot of work to do in how we position narrative in all of our schools. Absolutely,
Retirement Plans and Staying Connected
00:26:42
Speaker
and in in all schools. and And Anne, I met you many years ago at the Heads Network and you made an impact on me as an educator. And just in the short time that I got to know you in that conference in Philadelphia, it was amazing. And um I want more educators to to have the Anne Klotz experience. So how could they follow you online to learn a little bit about about your work?
00:27:09
Speaker
Oh, Crystal, you're so dear. I remember our conference vividly at my own alma mater. So I am a big um believer in um posting writing. I put up um my pieces. I write about school leadership. I write about personal narrative. I got an MFA in the middle of COVID. So you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook. I know that's for old people, but I'm still there. And I'm on Instagram as well. AVKKlee is my Instagram moniker. um And I love to be connected. And I am going to retire at the end of the next school year. So I am really looking um to be connected to lots of interesting people because I don't want to be lonely.
00:27:53
Speaker
um in whatever comes next. I've got another wonderful year ahead at Laurel School and then I don't know what will be next but I'm taking a gap year because I told the girls at Laurel I want them to know that women's lives are composed of many chapters. and that we don't just have to be on a shoot going down through what's expected next. um If we are lucky enough to be able to pause and think about what really, how we're going to, what Mary Katherine Bateson called, composing our lives. If we're able to do that, it's well worth doing. And if I care so much about reflection as a teacher, I have to be able to take some of my own medicine and think about what the next chapter will be.
00:28:36
Speaker
Well,
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:28:37
Speaker
congratulations on your decision and and whatever comes next in your journey. I'm sure it'll be wonderful. And all of those sites that you mentioned, I will put those in the show notes um so that folks can click on those and follow you. And Anne, it has been absolutely a pleasure to talk with you. We've learned so much. We could probably talk for another few hours. Oh, Crystal and Stara, thank you for having me. It was my great privilege and delight.
00:29:04
Speaker
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 MasteryForAll and LinkedIn in our Mastery Portfolio page. 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.