Transcript
Speaker: Hey, Emily.
Speaker: Hi, Rafa.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: I'm doing well.
Speaker: It's Saturday, January 7th, and I'm happy to be chatting with you again.
Speaker: I think it's been almost a month since we last spoke.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: I will say that I was very excited about that we got our first podcast out.
Speaker: I think we got a lot of good feedback from our first podcast.
Speaker: podcast, we wanted to start kind of unpacking some of our reflections in the month since we recorded.
Speaker: Inevitably, people like my mom and my husband both listened to it.
Speaker: I think at least two people listened to it.
Speaker: And
Speaker: More than two people listen to it according to the metric.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: And we did get some good thoughts and I continued just like thinking about, you know, what, especially for people who might not be familiar with what it's like to be a classroom teacher in a public school, some things that like we could elaborate on and do more of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: one of those things that came out was kind of talking about what it was like to teach a canned curriculum period or a curriculum period.
Speaker: A lot of like what I was reflecting on after was like,
Speaker: you know, maybe a lot of ed reporters just aren't as aware or don't know what it's like to be a classroom teacher in a public school where these curriculum companies and professional development companies really prey on these schools and sell solutions.
Speaker: It feels very predatory.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very predatory.
Speaker: It feels very predatory, at least from my perspective from being in public schools as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and what Rafa pointed out was that a key aspect of this that really traps a lot of teachers and becomes a self-fulfilling kind of prophecy of failure, if you...
Speaker: don't adhere exactly as the curriculum says you should teach.
Speaker: There's this idea of fidelity that a lot of teachers are held to when they're teaching a curriculum that they're handed.
Speaker: And we're going to unpack that idea of fidelity and what it means to be fidelitous.
Speaker: I never know.
Speaker: I've had the hardest time.
Speaker: What do you say?
Speaker: Faithful.
Speaker: It's faithful.
Speaker: Faithful?
Speaker: You went to CCD.
Speaker: With me.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Yeah, we did.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: We did go to CCD together.
Speaker: We learned a lot about faith and fidelity there.
Speaker: Chastity and all the virtues.
Speaker: Oh, girl.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now we're bad Catholics.
Speaker: Bad, bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have complex feelings about that as well, which we may or may not get into.
Speaker: But yeah, I was thinking that I would love to model what we would like to see more in schools, which is reflection on practice, on thinking, and then turning that into extension into changed thinking or practice.
Speaker: So, I mean, even as you listen to this person listening, beautiful person listening, you know, why are you listening to this?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And if you haven't listened to the first episode, feel free to.
Speaker: We talked a lot about science of reading and all that jazz.
Speaker: And, um, I do have some more thoughts and reflection on the last episode on that, especially just being clear about there's, there are so many ways to teach and what we really want to dig into is, uh,
Speaker: how might teachers and schools and systems be structured in such a way that people can be allowed to think critically about whatever they're working with and to have that time to pause and reflect.
Speaker: Because often we go from action to doing, action to doing, and not really deeper reflection of like,
Speaker: what's the purpose of education and how does that connect to the practice in my classroom?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is really what I feel is needed and what's important to our practice.
Speaker: So yeah, a little reflection, I guess, on the last episode.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And do you have any other reflections you want to talk about?
Speaker: No, just that like, you know, I...
Speaker: I was worried after it came out.
Speaker: I don't want to be coming down too hard on science of reading and shaming anyone or acting like I have that answer.
Speaker: I think the point that we want, like you were saying, to make is that there is no answer.
Speaker: There's no best solution for how to teach all children.
Speaker: Sometimes a really direct, explicit phonics approach is best for early readers and other times...
Speaker: different approach like teaching whole word recognition works for kids.
Speaker: And I've, you know, I think that's what nuance gets lost when we talk about a lot of ed reporting that we want to speak to in our podcast.
Speaker: So I'm excited today to unpack further.
Speaker: And I think
Speaker: when we're talking about our topic for today, we'll touch back on things that came up in the first episode and, um, yeah.
Speaker: Um, and we think the most useful thing can really be to speak from our practice and give examples to the listener of like what we're talking about.
Speaker: So we're going to unpack two terms today.
Speaker: Um, one that's kind of an antidote to the other, um,
Speaker: starting with talking about this idea of fidelity and what that means in the classroom, specifically with curriculum.
Speaker: And then we're going to move into a discussion about what Rafa posed.
Speaker: He came up with this beautiful idea of rather than fidelity, thinking about intentionality as a teacher.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So Rafa, I thought we could start because I talked at you a lot last time and I'll still talk, let's be real, but.
Speaker: I can't wait.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I would love to hear this idea of fidelity is something I really heard about from you more in my ed journey early on because I wasn't in public school classrooms initially.
Speaker: I was in community-based spaces where I was writing my own curriculum.
Speaker: We weren't really using like a box curriculum that I had to follow with really strict adherence.
Speaker: So I would love to know what is fidelity to you?
Speaker: How has it shown up to you in your practice?
Speaker: Can you speak a little to that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I want to talk a little bit about the word.
Speaker: So as I previously mentioned, Emily and I both went to CCD together, which for those who don't know is like, what does it stand for?
Speaker: Catholic Christian.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Is there catechism in there?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Catechism.
Speaker: Catechism.
Speaker: Basically I grew up Mexican Roman Catholic.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And they wanted us to learn more about Catholicism and all that.
Speaker: And so we went to CCD all through our childhood.
Speaker: And yes, this idea of, I guess fidelity is a word that has a very religious connotation to me.
Speaker: So it's very interesting.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: That it's used so often.
Speaker: And has been used so often when talking about curriculum and
Speaker: I have thoughts about that.
Speaker: I think one thought I have is, I think there's this idea of you're not faithful.
Speaker: The analogous thing would be like you're sinning or in a sense, you're not doing the right thing, period.
Speaker: So it really removes a lot of ambiguity and you're bad and you're bad.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And so I really think that that word charges a lot of the conversation when it comes to teaching curriculum and
Speaker: uh i think on the surface it makes sense just do the curriculum in order but it gets really messy when you know what is the line between you know the lesson says to teach math this way with this graphic organizer called a number bond which is basically three circles sometimes i mean this is one version of a number bond three circles let's say there's a 10 on top and it's connected with a five and a five showing there's two parts in the 10 right
Speaker: But what if that's a little too abstract right now, right?
Speaker: And the lesson doesn't call for using more concrete materials, but you want to.
Speaker: Are you being unfaithful to the curriculum?
Speaker: And I think how it's shown up for me is I've been told when I'm struggling in the past with, I don't know, my data doesn't come out as well for how the kids are doing on a test while you're faithful to the curriculum.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's like, well, I did this, but I changed this for this reason.
Speaker: And so it's like, oh, you weren't faithful enough.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You don't get better scores again.
Speaker: It's like, were you faithful to curriculum?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh, well, you didn't really modify to meet the needs of your kids.
Speaker: So both ways, it's all about you and not about
Speaker: The bigger issue, which is this whole idea of kids learn and people learning linearly, like denying the ambiguity that is learning.
Speaker: I think that's a huge thing with it denies that learning is ambiguous.
Speaker: How it happens is nonlinear.
Speaker: you know, thoughts that you, you seed months ago or seeded a new month ago, sprout months later.
Speaker: So yeah, I think this idea of fidelity is really controlling and does not come from a place of genuine curiosity or wanting to understand context.
Speaker: It comes, it's just a convenient way to sell products, frankly.
Speaker: Because yeah,
Speaker: that's the selling point, right?
Speaker: And if, again, if a curriculum is implemented and the data doesn't do that well and it's blamed on fidelity or lack of fidelity, it makes it really hard to critique curriculum, right?
Speaker: So that's in summary a little bit of my journey with it.
Speaker: I'm going to wind it back a little bit because I'm thinking some people in the audience, like for me,
Speaker: Before I really, I don't know, before I started teaching, I didn't really even understand what curriculum was, you know?
Speaker: And maybe we can just wind back and just give a quick definition of curriculum and just so people know what we're talking about because –
Speaker: It's one of those things we don't define.
Speaker: And I was surprised when... I understood curriculum when I started teaching just to be a general course of study.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be a book.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be something you buy.
Speaker: It's just something... Your course of study, basically.
Speaker: Like how you're going to end up with the objectives for your learning course.
Speaker: So for me as an ESL teacher, I taught adult ESOL.
Speaker: That was one of my first early jobs.
Speaker: Our curriculum was just like...
Speaker: We had different thematic units that kind of had different language learning goals that were in the purpose of teaching people who didn't know English, English.
Speaker: And yeah, in curriculum rather than like daily lesson plans, it's like the arc of your learning, right?
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I'm thinking that – one of the biggest shocks to me was when I got to public school, teachers thought curricula was synonymous with something that was handed to them.
Speaker: Yeah, I was going to say that tends to be –
Speaker: and they would bemoan like some people were like we didn't even have a curriculum last year and we didn't you know it's like so many teachers are so disempowered um that they even in though in a lot of teacher ed programs you're taught how to build your own curriculum you're taught how to make your own lesson plans not from a framework even you're expected to come up scratch and that's part of the art of teaching um and maybe you use standards to guide you right the common core state standards are meant to guide
Speaker: curriculum development theoretically so that people can create their own curriculum but have some general guide that everyone's working toward.
Speaker: But the Common Core doesn't stipulate how you arrive at those standards.
Speaker: It's just that you should
Speaker: all students should meet the grade standards by like the end of their grade.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, so that's just curriculum.
Speaker: So it gets confused.
Speaker: It's not necessarily a boxed pre-made thing.
Speaker: A lot of teachers historically have made their own curricula.
Speaker: Some just like in Providence where I taught teachers used to like district level would get together and make a curriculum for students.
Speaker: you know, English, math, and they might use books and research as guides, but it wasn't always, it's not necessary that you depend on an outside source to provide that for you.
Speaker: And in recent years, what was touched on in the science of reading curriculum, or sorry, science of reading podcast is that there are a lot of people, professors, professors,
Speaker: independent scholars who develop curriculum and sell them to schools.
Speaker: And so what Rafa was talking about, what I heard you talk about was it sounds like you were handed a lot of curriculum.
Speaker: Were you handed a lot of curricula or were you being accused of not being faithful to curriculum you made?
Speaker: What was the situation?
Speaker: Not following the sequence of a curriculum that I was given.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think you brought up a lot of interesting points.
Speaker: I liked your phrasing of an arc of learning as a very general idea of curriculum.
Speaker: I mean, even the team at Mi Casita co-create curriculum with kids, and we call it a community emergent pedagogy.
Speaker: So curriculum, you're right, can mean many different things.
Speaker: So yeah, when I think of fidelity to curriculum, I'm thinking of this idea of being following to the T a curriculum that you were handed.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And told to follow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think what you were touching on is something, if I talk concretely about my experience too, when I first encountered Fidelity, it was when I started teaching in a public school after years of working in community spaces, again, where I had a lot of control over my own development of my curriculum and
Speaker: we evaluated our effectiveness of the curriculum as a team.
Speaker: You know, we didn't really even use, and a lot of spaces I didn't use a formal test or like standardized tests to measure student learning.
Speaker: We just did holistic assessment, which is looking at holistic assessments.
Speaker: When you look at all student work and you look at their progression of learning over time and are they meeting the goals that they set out for themselves that we set out for them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And that's very different from how public schools assess themselves and develop curriculum.
Speaker: Because most public schools, I don't know, I shouldn't say most public schools because I don't have a statistic for this, but a lot of public schools and a lot of charters, I mean, charters are public, but a lot of schools, I'll just say, buy curriculum.
Speaker: They're sold by these scholars that I mentioned and sometimes not even scholars, sometimes just people who boxed a curriculum, made a curriculum and are really good at selling it.
Speaker: A lot of these people are business people before they're frankly scholars and they're more interested in getting out this curriculum to as many schools as possible to make the most money.
Speaker: That's the kind of down of it.
Speaker: And what Ralph was getting at, that like self-eating snake kind of thing of like where fidelity comes in, is they always say you have to follow, not always, I should say like the strictest, most canned programs.
Speaker: You have to follow exactly what they do.
Speaker: Some curricula that are sold and marketed are frameworks and they're not meant to be giving daily lesson plans with scripts.
Speaker: But a lot of public schools do buy these scripted.
Speaker: Make them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: Well, they make them into that many times.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I can't tell you the numbers.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: That was where I came up with it.
Speaker: It was really interesting.
Speaker: They implemented a new curriculum.
Speaker: The first year I started teaching middle school in Providence and this curriculum was
Speaker: To me, I had gone and got my PhD in what in other places is curriculum and instruction at my school.
Speaker: It wasn't.
Speaker: It was reading, writing, literacy.
Speaker: And I just like come fresh out of this like PhD program.
Speaker: You know, I did the backwards thing for some reason, going back to teaching school with your PhD.
Speaker: A girl knows what she's doing.
Speaker: Yeah, I do.
Speaker: But nobody cared.
Speaker: Not at that school.
Speaker: Wait, I do and nobody care.
Speaker: That happens so often to me as well.
Speaker: Anyway, I just felt bad statement.
Speaker: Yeah, okay, I guess I don't know.
Speaker: But when I was getting... Never mind.
Speaker: Another thing that comes with these pre-made curricula is lots of training that is very expensive because...
Speaker: God, you're hot on this Catholicism parallel.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Sorry, sorry.
Speaker: No, just briefly, I have very complex feelings.
Speaker: I think it's actually very beautiful things.
Speaker: It's another story with my family's embracing of it.
Speaker: But anyway, continue.
Speaker: Yeah, sorry.
Speaker: I said I wouldn't talk as much and here I go.
Speaker: No, it's fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So when I started teaching in Providence, they're rolling out a new curriculum.
Speaker: We had a whole week, I want to say, of training, like half-day trainings or at least multiple four-hour trainings before we even started school that we were paid for, which you might not get paid for in a charter or other schools.
Speaker: But thankfully, I was in a unionized district and we got paid for it.
Speaker: But basically, your training was just getting familiar with these planned units of study.
Speaker: There's always like a philosophy, kind of like an arch arch anchoring main guiding light.
Speaker: And this was what I got trained in was I was an ELA teacher.
Speaker: So it was, you know, basically high volume reading makes for students who are better readers.
Speaker: And so.
Speaker: There was also a very complex leveling system where I had to level every one of my kids.
Speaker: And when you teach middle school, you have four or five sections.
Speaker: And I had, I want to say I had five sections of like 25 kids each that I had to like level, which is like over a hundred kids.
Speaker: And, um, which is crazy in the first like month of school, you have to give them, you have to give them a reading level, but it's not just a test they can take themselves.
Speaker: You have to sit with kids individually.
Speaker: The way you should assess a reader level, you shouldn't just rely on a test.
Speaker: But I found it, for me, being the whole language lady I was, I found it really specific.
Speaker: Whole language lady.
Speaker: And I found it even too narrow the way they assessed students' reading level, but that's beside the point.
Speaker: Anyway, so I just spent this whole training being like, this is so bizarre because in the front matter of these training books, they were taught
Speaker: says it's a framework it says it said it wasn't meant to be treated as something that this is what you should do day one this is what you do day two this is what you do day three you should use certain aspects of the curriculum but they didn't require that you follow every day to the team yeah so for me fidelity didn't even come from the curriculum producers what happened was interesting
Speaker: When it got, when it got implemented in my school, there was a suggested daily act.
Speaker: You know, it's like, this is what you could do on day one down to a script of this is what you could say when you introduce this, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so because there was so much material you had to cover, um,
Speaker: A lot of teachers naturally gravitated towards using that plan.
Speaker: And we also happen to have a very oppressive principal at our school who was very bent on us following this curriculum to a T because it was implemented as a turnaround initiative.
Speaker: It was meant to give all Providence schools the same curriculum.
Speaker: So that if a kid switched from one school to another school, which happened a lot in Providence, because kids moved, they would have the same curriculum.
Speaker: Okay, fine.
Speaker: Because of that, the district was telling us we need to follow the suggested daily plans to a T. And it needs to be followed with fidelity.
Speaker: So it was coming from the district, more almost so than the curriculum people.
Speaker: And when the curriculum people would come through, they would be like, you don't have to teach exactly how it is.
Speaker: And I was like, thank you.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Because it doesn't work for everyone.
Speaker: It's like the script isn't going to work for all of you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was teaching.
Speaker: This was the fall of 2020.
Speaker: So kids, like we were having half.
Speaker: It was half the kids were in class.
Speaker: You know, like total chaos, total chaos, total.
Speaker: So much trauma, so much chaos anyway.
Speaker: But because.
Speaker: And our principal, I should say, was scared that I think on some level, even though she didn't really show this because she was had a very tough exterior, she was scared that if we didn't teach to fidelity, the district who really wanted us to teach fidelity would be upset and we would get in trouble.
Speaker: Even though I know a lot of other middle school principals didn't make their students their teachers.
Speaker: But that's like, I don't need to get that even with my administrator.
Speaker: Just to say that fidelity can be used as a tool of control.
Speaker: And that when she went through and saw, it never happened to me.
Speaker: It happened to my colleagues.
Speaker: But the feedback that she often gave people when she would do walkthroughs in their classroom was,
Speaker: It wasn't about are the kids engaged?
Speaker: Sometimes it was.
Speaker: Mostly it was about are you following the curriculum?
Speaker: Are you not?
Speaker: Even if the kids were engaged, if they were having fun, if they weren't doing exactly what they should be doing on the day that it said in the curriculum book, you were a bad teacher.
Speaker: And she wouldn't say that, but that's what it came to do.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: You just described it so perfectly.
Speaker: And I like how you describe the structures at play, the district level, and with the principal, and with the walkthroughs, and the control aspect, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I joke a little bit about the parallels to the institution of the Catholic Church that I grew up in.
Speaker: Again, I want to differentiate that from some beautiful beliefs that are there.
Speaker: But it's inextricable from capitalism and settler colonialism in that sense.
Speaker: Because this idea of fidelity, well, this idea of being faithful to something, not doing it, being shamed, it's almost like being sinning.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then in a way you could be excommunicated, aka fired.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or shut down.
Speaker: It's arguably the same structure at play with a different name.
Speaker: And it's kind of banana pants, honestly.
Speaker: That is our modern education system.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: And what's banana pants to me is a lot of pushes for change.
Speaker: Don't want to change that framework at all.
Speaker: No, they want to change things within the framework, more technology, more this, but like, yeah, the framework itself is super oppressive and archaic.
Speaker: So that's what needs to change.
Speaker: But that's what's, that's where the nitty gritty gets in.
Speaker: And I realized that, you know, we're, we're thinking a lot and we're taking a lot and,
Speaker: one thing I wanted to say in name is that we're going to land more in practice, right?
Speaker: You and I don't, don't talk a lot before we record.
Speaker: So this is kind of our processing that we also wanted to make visible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, but I, we are very interested in,
Speaker: I'll continue talking practice.
Speaker: I can briefly say, I think we need to go much more into the direction of emergent co-created curriculum.
Speaker: Can't wait to talk about that.
Speaker: Well, it's going to be a good point, a good place to turn.
Speaker: And I think we wanted to talk about intentionality.
Speaker: And so I would love to hear when Rafa posed this idea for a discussion for a podcast, this idea of fidelity versus intentionality.
Speaker: I was really struck by it because I hadn't thought of it.
Speaker: And I was very deep because I recently left that job in the oppressive middle school.
Speaker: I hadn't thought about what would be better because I was so bogged down with the pain, the pain and really frustration and disappointment about having taught through the last two years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was really, that made me really hopeful.
Speaker: And it's something we could hang.
Speaker: We could, we could like provide as I was thinking, like hang up like a picture, but like we could, you know,
Speaker: use as an anecdote or it's not an anecdote oh my god i'm sounding so dumb um we could use as like um emily sorry sorry i sound like your growth mindset even though there's problematic parts to that too but that is just to say you are actively processing something in the moment and i think that's beautiful even if it's messy
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Well, I would just love to hear more about what did you mean when you post that intentionality?
Speaker: How has that worked for you in your practice now?
Speaker: It's clear that I think initially you felt a lot of pressure to be faithful to someone else's curriculum.
Speaker: And that was how your worth as a teacher was measured in a lot of ways.
Speaker: And I think you've done a lot to heal and come out of that because it was so formative.
Speaker: You know, again, we will talk a lot about this, but just like how inverse our experiences were.
Speaker: I started in really free spaces and ended up in very oppressive spaces as a teacher.
Speaker: And you started in very, not like necessarily your first job, but definitely in your earlier career.
Speaker: No, my first job was actually really amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Shout out to Quinnipiac Elementary in New Haven.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Your second job was notably not.
Speaker: Your second job was notably not.
Speaker: We won't talk about that now, but yeah.
Speaker: You definitely had some very oppressive places where you were expected to be faithful to curriculum.
Speaker: That was all that you were judged on in your success as a teacher.
Speaker: And you've developed, to me, I've watched you blossom really with this new, especially in Mi Casita, like talking about watching how you build your curriculum is so beautiful.
Speaker: And I would love to hear more about intentionality for you and what that means.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I think I'm gonna try to keep this as simple as I can.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think the essence of intentional teaching or intentional anything is setting an intention, planning to execute it, do it, and then reflect on whether or not your intention matched the impact.
Speaker: And then learn from that space.
Speaker: What did you learn about yourself as an educator?
Speaker: What did you learn about your children or your community that you're learning with, your adults you were learning with?
Speaker: And then iterate and then reflect again and make a hypothesis of like, hmm, I think this might be happening because of X, Y, Z. So, for example, with the whole reading thing, maybe I'm reading with a child and I'm assuming they've showed interest already in reading, which is another prerequisite, right?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And they're looking at the book and they really want to read the word in a struggling way.
Speaker: Maybe my hypothesis is actually like, wait, can you even hear the first sound in words?
Speaker: Let's close the book for a second.
Speaker: What's the first sound in cat?
Speaker: And if they can do that, like, okay, if they can't do that, okay, my hypothesis is correct.
Speaker: And so I'm going to change what I'm going to do with this person right now, right?
Speaker: And then I'm going to implement something else.
Speaker: Maybe I'll do some more.
Speaker: singing and music and mixed with dance and other things.
Speaker: And then of course we'll revisit the letters again.
Speaker: So maybe they are able to now better hear the first sound than words.
Speaker: So we lean more into
Speaker: Okay, so what if, so you see the word cat again and they're struggling to read, but they struggle to see that the C has the K sound.
Speaker: So maybe they need a little more support.
Speaker: My hypothesis there is, oh, they need a little more explicit help maybe connecting the sound that they're able to make, I know, to the letter.
Speaker: Okay, so what are fun games we can do around that?
Speaker: And this is assuming that's my goal, right?
Speaker: I really want to learn the letters.
Speaker: And so, but again, those activities, whatever I decide to do, that's my creativity.
Speaker: I might pull from things, I might pull from my, right?
Speaker: But like, but the thinking is what's very important there more than anything else.
Speaker: So when I work with Mi Casita, I'm really working on like asking a lot more questions, giving a lot less, this is what I would do.
Speaker: And when a teacher is getting stuck with something, I give a little mini homework assignment.
Speaker: I joke it's a homework assignment.
Speaker: Basically, I'll be like... What do you mean when a teacher is getting stuck with something?
Speaker: What do you mean by that?
Speaker: Maybe they're going to be stuck on like... They keep building the same things in blocks and I'm having trouble seeing how they might extend it.
Speaker: And they're having trouble just brainstorming ideas, period, for whatever reason.
Speaker: So I'm like, you know what?
Speaker: Tomorrow...
Speaker: if they make it again, bring the kids around what they made and ask the kids.
Speaker: And ask the kids a question.
Speaker: I'm not going to tell you what question to ask, but ask the kids a question and then come back to me and tell me how that turned out.
Speaker: and so that way the the teacher still has to think you know about the question and and they're still engaging with the process of inquiry of like what might be at play and starting to embrace again the ambiguity like you don't know that's fine and so what's the how are we going to learn more about what we know and don't know and then and then it's cycles and cycles and cycles of that basically
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: And I, what I'm hearing and what makes it different, I was thinking in my mind to illustrate further again for people who aren't teachers necessarily, there's two things I really want to hit on and would say them now and elaborate later.
Speaker: So don't forget.
Speaker: First is, um,
Speaker: what it would look like if you were in a situation where you were asked to be faithful to a pre-planned curriculum.
Speaker: So I thought a lot about that, what it would look like in a classroom that was more focused on fidelity over intentionality.
Speaker: And the second thing I was thinking of was your approach.
Speaker: You are, I'm not sure if this is clear from our other podcasts, but you're a leader in your school and you're, are you educational director?
Speaker: Is that your title?
Speaker: We are all leaders at Mika Sita.
Speaker: You're all leaders.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: No, I actually mean that very sincerely.
Speaker: Like everybody there.
Speaker: I believe you.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But yes, I'm technically the education director.
Speaker: Yes, I'm technically the director of this.
Speaker: Analyze to a principal, I guess.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You mentor a lot of teachers.
Speaker: And that's part of your role in addition to being an educator still now.
Speaker: The other thing that struck me about this was the difference in approach to how you approach your teachers that you work with in more of like a mentorship capacity than principals in other schools might approach their teachers.
Speaker: And I'm going to unpack what I mean in a second.
Speaker: So first, I was just thinking of what would this look like in a fidelity versus intentionality situation?
Speaker: I can see...
Speaker: you reading with a kid and seeing them not following, like, let's say it was prescribed.
Speaker: You have to read this book on this day and they have, you have to ask questions like, and do these activities.
Speaker: If a kid wasn't able to engage with the activities instead of pausing and questioning like you did and like redirecting, I shouldn't say redirecting, re asking, learning, asking and designing a new activity as a result.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You would probably like a lot of teachers feel like, oh my God, this kid can't do this.
Speaker: Like they're behind.
Speaker: I need to.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: There's something wrong with the kid.
Speaker: Remediate.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Remediate.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They need special help.
Speaker: You know, it's like a remediation book in the curriculum.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So that's like the first point.
Speaker: The second thing was I was so struck by how you approached in that scenario, talking about how you would support the teacher who was stuck in trying to think about what direction to go.
Speaker: Because I think that's what makes a lot of teachers feel like
Speaker: they can't design curriculum.
Speaker: A lot of teachers doubt their own ability to design.
Speaker: You're not prepared that way.
Speaker: Teaching programs a lot don't prepare you.
Speaker: Well, it is just scary.
Speaker: It's scary to be on the hook, even if you're prepared.
Speaker: Cause I know in a lot of teacher ed programs, that's true.
Speaker: It's different when you're, when you're,
Speaker: sure tasked with teaching kids in for example in preschool like really early literacy skills that they don't leave preschool and the skills needed to be successful in kindergarten which emergent readers you know it's like that could be you feel like a a large onus right and uh a big responsibility and so anyway so i thought that way you empowered teachers to feel like i i
Speaker: I feel weird about the word empowered, but it's the only word I can think of to use right now.
Speaker: But like the way that you made teachers just realize, like find that light again in themselves, you know, that they're not, they're, they're knowledgeable and they're intellectuals.
Speaker: And that's the biggest problem.
Speaker: And that's one thing we haven't talked about, but is very key.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: to a school functioning with the canned curriculum that they value above a teacher's decision making.
Speaker: And that is the de-skilling of teachers.
Speaker: And in my school and in schools where there are these canned curriculum, teachers are not seen as experts.
Speaker: They're seen as warm bodies in a classroom to control children and teach them.
Speaker: Yes, that's what they say.
Speaker: But ultimately, like, it's not clear to me that teachers are valued as having perspective on their kids.
Speaker: And in a way, you're also devaluing students because students don't have impact on the curriculum at all in these situations.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so they don't get to shape the direction of their learning.
Speaker: And so it's like...
Speaker: By devaluing, it's like people always act like standing up for teachers is selfish on behalf of the teachers.
Speaker: But if you don't stand up for teachers, you're not standing up for kids.
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, those are the kids are with the teachers in a K through 12 classroom setting the most over any other person in a school, right?
Speaker: And if they don't feel, if teachers don't feel empowered to speak up for their kids, to get to know their kids and tailor the learning to their kids, they're not going to do it.
Speaker: And they won't do it in a place where you're only judged on teaching with fidelity to curriculum.
Speaker: That's also pay way better, please.
Speaker: I know because you need money.
Speaker: It's a lot of fricking time to actually design.
Speaker: I've done like internet curricula.
Speaker: Like you're doing it.
Speaker: It's a lot of really a lot of time.
Speaker: Just to, you know, I'm thinking of New York city where I live.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just to like, not worry about meeting your basic needs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But that idea of intentionality is really, I think, helpful.
Speaker: And if any administrators are listening, please think about this.
Speaker: If any people who write curriculum think about this and we need to- Reach out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'd love to chat.
Speaker: Yeah, we'd love to.
Speaker: Yeah, we'd love to.
Speaker: I'm in the room with an administrator right now.
Speaker: What am I talking about?
Speaker: wait with Larry with me I was like hey wait the virtual room yeah yeah well the man now I'm just kidding I'm glad I mean it's a weird place to be kind yeah I'm teasing you are the only person I would ever want to be my principal just FYI
Speaker: We can talk about the organization of Mi Casita another time, perhaps.
Speaker: But I appreciate you saw the mentor part.
Speaker: I mean, one thing I'm trying, this idea of a pedagogical companion.
Speaker: I've been reading from Teaching the Thinking, I think it's called, by, I'm going to get the names wrong.
Speaker: and pillow and margie carter highly recommend if you want to go in this direction especially if you have a leadership role or power in uh school and yeah they used the term pedagogical companion and that's really my aim when i'm with yeah the rest of the team right and and there's lots of nuance to that and like what do you do when someone's really not meeting expectations like we can talk about that another time but um that's all that's all a part of it
Speaker: But what really strikes me is this idea of just asking lots of good questions.
Speaker: And that's a skill that I'm trying to develop myself.
Speaker: That's my growing edge as well.
Speaker: And knowing when to give the, I'm jokingly calling the homework assignment, but the assignment.
Speaker: I feel like sometimes if you struggle with the reflection, it may be because you don't have a mirror, so to speak.
Speaker: You don't have a set of questions even to reflect on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If you're not taught, I mean, a lot of schools don't teach, they discourage questioning because a lot of schools are reliant on a top-down model.
Speaker: Can I tell you a quick story about that?
Speaker: Yeah, please.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Story time.
Speaker: I got my blanket.
Speaker: I was in my second school that you mentioned that I was not a great fit for.
Speaker: And for many reasons.
Speaker: I remember we were having a grade level team meeting.
Speaker: I taught second grade at that time.
Speaker: and they were giving these huge homework packets to the kids.
Speaker: And one of my teammates brought up- How old were these kids?
Speaker: In second grade?
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: I think you're like seven, eight, maybe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just like picture that seven and eight-year-olds with fat homework.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: And so it's about to be the winter break.
Speaker: And our grade-level chair is talking about how we need to have these packets.
Speaker: And one of my teammates was like, you know, I just learned there's like no research that shows this actually helps.
Speaker: Like it's actually better to rest.
Speaker: And again, most of us are white in the room or white passing.
Speaker: I'm Latinx, but I pass as white many times.
Speaker: And we're teaching basically all Black children, right?
Speaker: And so there's that...
Speaker: dynamic that really bothered me too and within that dynamic the grade level chair said well I don't disagree with you but this is what we have to do because that's what's best for kids like it was and it was like that level of non-criticality if I were to give that a label yeah
Speaker: And not, and really discouraging questioning.
Speaker: Like, why are you, why would you ask a question or question something if that's going to be, that's going to be the answer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So anyway, that's what that reminded me of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I mean, that's like, that's, but that's prevalent.
Speaker: That's prevalent in our system.
Speaker: And it ties in.
Speaker: Fidelity faith over.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Criticism.
Speaker: Criticism.
Speaker: And is that the kind of system you want?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like, it's not the one I want.
Speaker: It's not the one many people say they want.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what are we doing?
Speaker: I love also, you are one of these, you have a really nice way of being critical without tearing things down.
Speaker: I think there's a thing in what I see happening in the world, what I've seen happen in school districts.
Speaker: We're talking about reform.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: We have to burn it all down or tear it all out.
Speaker: If the curriculum doesn't work in three years, it's not going to work.
Speaker: You know, we have to start new again.
Speaker: And it's tied into capitalism.
Speaker: It's tied into, you know, a lot of things.
Speaker: Very systemic forms of oppression in our society.
Speaker: And I love how you...
Speaker: think about asking questions.
Speaker: So as to prompt self-reflection and like kind of not self-correction, but like growth, you do that and you're able to hold like a lot of complex things with people.
Speaker: It's like, you're not a kind of person that throws away relationships because you disagree with someone about something.
Speaker: It's like, you're very like, even in the way you react, interact with other people in the way, even like the way you talk about the Catholic church, it's not like you're like throwing out the whole thing.
Speaker: There's like aspects of it.
Speaker: You alluded to that you find,
Speaker: you know that you connect with and it's like we need to think that way I think also when we're talking about ed reform and think about and one thing that has come up in reflecting on our science of reading podcast and all this it's like I want to move beyond just like I think there are some things that probably should be totally like burned down and started over but like
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: It also happens every time in education.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It's like, like there's also like, we're not tearing down or burning down the right things.
Speaker: We're, we're, and we're, we're just like alien.
Speaker: In my experience, it's just burning out teachers basically by replacing curricula every three years, which happens in a lot of districts.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: especially underfunded districts where there's high teacher turnover and it just kind of perpetuates this.
Speaker: Like, I think we need to find a way to invite more of that kind of like healthy criticality, you know, I don't know.
Speaker: Healthy critical.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a whole other topic.
Speaker: Ooh, we can go in so many directions after this episode.
Speaker: Future episodes.
Speaker: So many possibilities.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, should we start talking about school reform?
Speaker: I think for some people to the history of it,
Speaker: People act like there hasn't been school reform ever since it started.
Speaker: And it's like so many things, so many things have been tried.
Speaker: Hot Mass Express.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The what Express?
Speaker: The Hot Mass Express.
Speaker: Come join us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: I guess we're on that too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, we're getting closer to 45 minutes.
Speaker: I'm wondering if now, I guess just to summarize this time together, like Emily and I wanted to talk a little bit about fidelity of curriculum.
Speaker: One, to give an eye for people who are not teachers into what that means.
Speaker: And also to talk a little bit about the bigger picture and some implications.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we hope you found this interesting.
Speaker: And if you want to connect with us, you can email us at our Gmail, which is in the description.
Speaker: Pedagogyofthedistressed at gmail.com.
Speaker: I just checked it.
Speaker: We have nothing.
Speaker: We have something in spam saying that we had a $15 million inheritance waiting for us.
Speaker: Oh, Rafa, that sounds real to me.
Speaker: I want to look into it.
Speaker: I'm looking to a fast solution to my... There you go.
Speaker: Fast solutions for the win, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, please connect.
Speaker: We don't have an Instagram or anything yet, but who knows?
Speaker: Little by little.
Speaker: We should probably have an Instagram.
Speaker: are you thinking yeah yeah yeah i don't know it sounds like more work but i but uh yeah who knows yeah maybe one day we'll share our instagrams but yeah i'm not sure until then you can email i'm also not hard to find yes you can email us yeah at
Speaker: Oh, pedagogy of this dress at gmail.com.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: In the description.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anything else before we sign off?
Speaker: No, I don't think so.
Speaker: This is just really, I just always love talking to you and your brain is so beautiful and your kids are lucky to have you.
Speaker: Thank you, Emily.
Speaker: Your teacher candidates are so lucky to have you.
Speaker: I loved talking to them.
Speaker: I got to talk to Emily's class.
Speaker: And that was really fun.
Speaker: Yeah, they loved talking about it, unsurprisingly.
Speaker: I also just got to note that Larry spilled baby oil.
Speaker: He was giving the baby a bath and spilled baby oil all over the place.
Speaker: Is everything okay?
Speaker: Do you have to go now?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, he's fine, but I just have to probably go help him clean that up.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Okay, well, with that.
Speaker: I'm going to go slide around on my bathroom floor.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Stay safe.
Speaker: I will.
Speaker: Love you.
Speaker: Love everybody listening.
Speaker: And, yes, take care.
Speaker: Happy New Year.
Speaker: Yeah, Happy New Year.
Speaker: Ciao.
Speaker: Bye.
