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The Landscape Model of Learning w/ Dr. Kapono Ciotti
4 Plays5 months ago
Today we are joined by Dr. Kapono Ciotti. Dr. Ciotti is the Executive Director of What School Could Be, an organization offering a whole host of things: free resources, a flourishing community, coaching services, graduate coursework, and more; plus WSCB is one of Human Restoration Project’s partners. Prior to this work, Dr. Ciotti grew up in Honolulu, Hawai’i in a progressive, constructivist school and taught in the same area, then in Senegal, and then became a school leader in the United States and internationally. He’s worked in over one hundred schools across four continents, including as national faculty for the National Association of Independent Schools in diversity, equity, and justice.
Dr. Kapono Ciotti @ Solution Tree
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of the Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of our podcast.
00:00:14
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm part of the progressive education nonprofit Human Restoration Project.
00:00:20
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Alexander Gruber, Julia Valenti and Jennifer Mann.
00:00:27
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:29
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org or find us on social media and YouTube.
00:00:35
Speaker
We're proud to have hosted hundreds of hours of ad-free conversations over the years.
00:00:39
Speaker
So if you haven't yet, consider rating our podcast in your app to help us reach more listeners.
Meet Dr. Kapono Siati
00:00:44
Speaker
Today, we are joined by Dr. Kapono Siati.
00:00:48
Speaker
Dr. Siati is the executive director of What School Could Be, an organization offering a whole host of things, free resources, a flourishing community, coaching services, graduate coursework, and more.
00:00:58
Speaker
Plus, What School Could Be is one of HRP's partners.
00:01:02
Speaker
Prior to this work, Dr. Siadi grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii in a progressive constructivist school and taught in the same area.
00:01:08
Speaker
Then in Senegal, he's joining us from Cairo.
00:01:10
Speaker
He's been a school leader in the United States and internationally.
00:01:13
Speaker
He's worked in over 100 schools across four continents, including as national faculty for the National Association of Independent Schools in Diversity, Equity, and Justice.
Exploring 'What's Working Now' in Education
00:01:22
Speaker
You can find his website and social links in our show notes.
00:01:26
Speaker
Thank you for joining us today, Kapono.
00:01:28
Speaker
It's a real privilege to be here.
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm a huge fan of Human Restoration Project and everything you guys are doing.
00:01:34
Speaker
And it's really nice to join you.
00:01:36
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, of course.
00:01:38
Speaker
And I appreciate your work as well.
00:01:40
Speaker
We're huge fans of What School Could Be just generally.
00:01:43
Speaker
And I got to dive into your work.
00:01:45
Speaker
I read the book that you co-authored.
00:01:47
Speaker
And particularly, I started watching through the series that you did.
00:01:51
Speaker
I'm not sure if you're still updating it, that What's Working Now series.
00:01:54
Speaker
And
00:01:55
Speaker
It was really cool.
00:01:56
Speaker
So for people that aren't aware, it's a video series where you're connecting with educators, family members, oftentimes young people to basically talk about that question.
00:02:05
Speaker
What is working in education?
00:02:07
Speaker
And in order to introduce yourselves to folks that perhaps aren't familiar with your work, I just love to know kind of it's a two
Understanding Student Protagonism
00:02:15
Speaker
part question.
00:02:15
Speaker
One, what do you feel like is working in education today?
00:02:18
Speaker
So how would you answer that question of what's working now?
00:02:20
Speaker
And then how are young people just generally informing those ideas?
00:02:25
Speaker
I'm really glad you brought me blast back from the past on what's working now.
00:02:29
Speaker
I haven't updated it.
00:02:30
Speaker
It was a really neat, I had fun doing that as a COVID quarantine project and connecting with lots of really neat people around the world, including young people.
00:02:42
Speaker
What am I seeing working now?
00:02:45
Speaker
I'm glad you brought that up because I see a lot of things not working now.
00:02:49
Speaker
But youth,
00:02:51
Speaker
as protagonists.
00:02:52
Speaker
So I appreciate that you were able to dig into the Landscape Model, a learning book that I was able to co-author with Jennifer Klein.
00:02:59
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And one of the ideas of the book came out of Jennifer's time in Latin America.
00:03:08
Speaker
And the core idea was protagonism, students as the main actors of their education.
00:03:14
Speaker
And so if I think back to my education from junior kindergarten to sixth grade at a John Dewey and social constructivist progressive education school.
00:03:27
Speaker
I had the gift of being the main character of the movie that was my education.
00:03:34
Speaker
I was the Jason Bourne of my action film of going to school.
00:03:38
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And my brothers who went to the same school as I, we commented in our adulthood that it wasn't until we got to middle school that we realized why kids in the movies were trying to cut school.
00:03:52
Speaker
It was not even something that we would have thought of.
00:03:54
Speaker
School was the place we wanted to be.
00:03:56
Speaker
And that idea of, of protagonism, student protagonism is the line that goes straight through the landscape model, a learning book.
00:04:02
Speaker
And I see lots that's working now with regard to student protagonism.
Challenges and Opportunities in Education
00:04:06
Speaker
There's so many challenges to our education system that is in my humble opinion, deprofessionalizing teachers and education.
00:04:15
Speaker
And by doing so really plugging kids into a nouveau matrix.
00:04:21
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And I don't say that being like anti-technology.
00:04:24
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I'm super into technology.
00:04:27
Speaker
And I really think AI plays a potentially big and powerful role in the future of what will work.
00:04:34
Speaker
But what's working now?
00:04:35
Speaker
So two schools ago, I was a school leader of YLI Public Elementary, YLI Elementary Public Charter
Examples of Student Protagonism in Action
00:04:43
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School in Honolulu.
00:04:44
Speaker
And we used to take educators around.
00:04:47
Speaker
And it was the educators who'd been teaching for 30, 35, 40, 45 years who would walk around and being like, how are you getting away with doing these same good things that we were doing 40 years ago?
00:05:01
Speaker
And every other school had gone through, you know, flavor of the month after flavor of the month and all these compliance metrics.
00:05:08
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And I think while we were doing tons of forward thinking, progressive, you know, lab school trying new practice stuff, there were cores of what we were doing that
00:05:19
Speaker
was all about student agency and students owning their work, being protagonists.
00:05:25
Speaker
And it's stuff that we've been doing forever in many schools.
00:05:28
Speaker
So what's working now?
00:05:31
Speaker
Everything that I'm seeing that's working connects somehow to student protagonism and or teacher protagonism, teachers being the main actors of their professional careers as well.
00:05:42
Speaker
What does that look like for you now, either being at what school could be or in a school leadership role?
00:05:49
Speaker
What does it literally look like to be a protagonist?
00:05:51
Speaker
Like what would be an example of that occurring at the school?
Real-world Impact through Authentic Assessment
00:05:55
Speaker
I'm actually working with a couple schools right now on an instructional assessment strategy, authentic assessments, which is not magic.
00:06:05
Speaker
It's not overly complicated.
00:06:07
Speaker
But the idea of an assessment being grounded in something authentic that makes a difference to people outside of the four walls of your classroom.
00:06:18
Speaker
And I'll give you one really, really concrete idea and a concrete example.
00:06:22
Speaker
This came from co-author of the landscape model, Jennifer Klein.
00:06:25
Speaker
So Jennifer, I don't think she'll mind me telling her story.
00:06:28
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We tell each other stories a lot.
00:06:29
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So Jennifer was working as a PBL coach with a school group.
00:06:34
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And this was during two, I can't believe I'm saying this, two Ebola pandemics ago.
00:06:39
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So before COVID, before that last small Ebola pandemic, there was a larger one.
00:06:44
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where there was a scare with Ebola coming into New York.
00:06:47
Speaker
And she was working with this group and this group of high school kids wanted to explore ways that they could actually do something.
00:06:53
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It was an authentic assessment.
00:06:54
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Could they do something that really impacted the walls outside of the classroom?
00:06:57
Speaker
Not the typical, I was a social studies teacher for 12 years.
00:07:00
Speaker
So social studies teachers, we love the PSA, right?
00:07:03
Speaker
Like we go to the public service announcement.
00:07:05
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And this one, the teacher with Jennifer's help really wanted them to engage in
00:07:14
Speaker
learning and the assessment, the presentation of learning that really did impact outside the four walls of the classroom.
00:07:20
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It was more than just turning something in for the teacher or presenting to their peers.
00:07:23
Speaker
And so they'd come up with several ways that they could help impact positively this Ebola epidemic.
00:07:30
Speaker
And one of the groups came up with a public service announcement.
00:07:34
Speaker
But instead of having it be a video or a poster that they shared with their class, and 18 of them shared the very similar posters over and over again, Jennifer helped the teacher actually find a connection in Sierra Leone, somebody who was a radio DJ.
00:07:50
Speaker
Okay, so this might be a little bit of an ambitious exemplar.
00:07:54
Speaker
It doesn't need to be that far across, you know, oceans and into another country, but it's just such a good one.
00:07:59
Speaker
So kids produced this public service announcement, much like kids in, you know, my social studies class when I was a far less sophisticated teacher when I was 23 and had no idea what I was doing.
00:08:11
Speaker
Not that 23-year-olds all don't know what they're doing.
00:08:13
Speaker
I didn't at 23.
00:08:15
Speaker
And they produced a public service announcement to help people understand how to actually stop the spread of Ebola.
00:08:25
Speaker
And just so this wasn't like, you know, the all knowing West helping a developing nation, other groups were producing public service announcements for an audience in the United States as to why they should not be xenophobic against this disease.
00:08:40
Speaker
but I'll go with the Sierra Leone side of this.
00:08:43
Speaker
So on the Sierra Leone side of it, the teacher was able to tell her students, what you do and what you produce is gonna make a difference in actual lives.
00:08:53
Speaker
What you say, your research, the product of that research, the quality of your production
00:08:59
Speaker
could save lives.
00:08:59
Speaker
And if we do it wrong, it could hurt lives.
00:09:04
Speaker
And she said, you know, I'm not going to let you send it if it's going to hurt lives, right?
00:09:07
Speaker
Like, I won't put you in that position.
00:09:10
Speaker
But we have the opportunity to, you know, do something real.
00:09:14
Speaker
So, you know, I guess it would be a fine end to the story to say that, you know, that authentic side of it,
00:09:22
Speaker
them being the main actors of learning and feeling like their actions, knowing that their actions, not just feeling, knowing that their actions was making a real difference in the world and impact.
00:09:32
Speaker
But the story has a couple of different steps.
00:09:34
Speaker
So the teacher went back the next year because she had been accepted to present this PBL, this authentic assessment at a conference.
00:09:41
Speaker
And she went back to ask the kids if they would be, if they were okay with her sharing their PSAs with this conference, because it wasn't her work, right?
00:09:48
Speaker
They owned it, they created it.
00:09:50
Speaker
She wanted to give them that respect.
00:09:52
Speaker
All of them said yes.
00:09:54
Speaker
And Jennifer will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think nine of the 10 groups came back to her and said, but miss, like, we want to do one more edit before you take it to the adults.
00:10:04
Speaker
Like this was a year after the grade was done, right?
00:10:06
Speaker
A year after the Ebola epidemic hit art, but they had such strong ownership of it and such strong pride in it because it had that impact.
The Landscape Model of Learning
00:10:16
Speaker
That might be a kind of a pretty pinnacle and extreme example, but there's so many schools we're working with that are allowing kids to do real things.
00:10:26
Speaker
allowing the first graders to do real things and be real reading buddies with real kindergartners and really publish books that really go in the library.
00:10:38
Speaker
So, you know, just a few examples.
00:10:40
Speaker
No, no, I think that's beautiful.
00:10:42
Speaker
I love the idea of purposeful classrooms being entirely based around what actually matters.
00:10:49
Speaker
And that sounds like common sense, but it is a quite radical action.
00:10:53
Speaker
And what's interesting is I'm sure you find this in your work as well.
00:10:57
Speaker
Also, shout out former social studies teacher myself.
00:11:00
Speaker
Similar story, did a lot of PSAs.
00:11:02
Speaker
But I found as well that kids really resonated and appreciated projects that didn't work.
00:11:09
Speaker
So obviously, this is not the goal.
00:11:11
Speaker
You want it to be that pinnacle situation where things pan out and you have this really cool story to tell.
00:11:17
Speaker
But one that comes to the forefront of my mind, I remember we were working on this project in
00:11:22
Speaker
I want to say like November 2019, where the idea was going to be that our school lunch sucked.
00:11:28
Speaker
It was one of the first things that kids identified as a problem with the school.
00:11:31
Speaker
Our school lunch was not good.
00:11:33
Speaker
And we basically did research on how can we improve school lunches in our social studies class.
00:11:38
Speaker
And we landed on this organization called the Chef Anne Foundation, which is a really cool nonprofit.
00:11:43
Speaker
People should look it up.
00:11:44
Speaker
And they help you write grants and give you a lot of resources to do from scratch kitchens.
00:11:50
Speaker
And we built...
00:11:51
Speaker
ostensibly an entire design thinking project around this where kids would travel around at different schools, see how their food sources work.
00:11:58
Speaker
There's one that was within 30 minutes of us that used a very similar process and it was the best school lunch I ever had.
00:12:04
Speaker
And basically once we did that field trip, they were sold.
00:12:07
Speaker
So we had all this like like authentic PSA slash board presentation slash kids navigating the contractual codes of how school lunch workers work and doing empathy interviews with them is really complicated.
00:12:21
Speaker
And then March 2020 hit, and it basically never materialized into anything real.
00:12:28
Speaker
A whole year had passed.
00:12:29
Speaker
I think a lot of the kind of hype around it had fallen.
00:12:33
Speaker
And honestly, navigating that post-2020 was very complex to a point where it wasn't worth it.
00:12:38
Speaker
But I left the classroom in 2022.
00:12:42
Speaker
I still receive emails from students regarding that specific project on how much
00:12:48
Speaker
They one learn from it, but two, some of them work in schools and they were talking about how they are using the chef and foundation to improve on their school lunches based on that work that we did.
00:12:59
Speaker
So even though it's not necessarily coming to fruition, the authenticity of it still translates because in real life, it doesn't always work out and that's okay.
00:13:08
Speaker
It doesn't have to be this fake manufactured thing.
00:13:12
Speaker
I actually, I don't want to take up too much of the podcast on these types of exemplars, but because I think in the work that you and I are doing now, people seeing, hearing, getting that like visceral, like what could this look like is so important.
00:13:27
Speaker
And what you said about like things not working,
00:13:30
Speaker
Wai Lai Elementary Public Charter School that I was at, you know, the younger kid example of this is we did a market day with fifth graders.
00:13:37
Speaker
You know, the typical like Dragon's Den, Shark Tank come up with the project.
00:13:44
Speaker
They did get $20 investment from friends and family.
00:13:47
Speaker
We did the Shark Tank thing.
00:13:48
Speaker
They built it.
00:13:49
Speaker
They did one in winter break and they sold it for this like winter festival, made some money.
00:13:56
Speaker
And that money, if...
00:13:58
Speaker
or they didn't make money and that money they donated, they did research and donated to a local nonprofit.
00:14:03
Speaker
And the team were brilliant in, like you said, letting kids succeed or fail
00:14:10
Speaker
on their own and their grade wasn't tied to how much money they made, but they really felt ownership over how much money they made because they wanted to donate money to this nonprofit, right?
00:14:22
Speaker
But I think, you know, in that design thinking vein that you were just talking about, you know, I love design thinking.
00:14:30
Speaker
I do a lot of design thinking trainings myself and it's so tempting in how
00:14:36
Speaker
little time we have to do like one design thinking cycle and stop right before you get to like the reiteration of it.
00:14:43
Speaker
Like, oh, you got feedback.
00:14:45
Speaker
And now if we had time, you'd rebuild that.
00:14:48
Speaker
But we don't.
00:14:49
Speaker
So we're going on to the next thing.
00:14:50
Speaker
These teachers were dedicated to learning from the reflection.
00:14:55
Speaker
So they redid market day in the spring.
00:14:58
Speaker
And they
00:14:59
Speaker
By default, almost every kid did better, not everyone, not every group made more money or even money, some groups did worse.
00:15:07
Speaker
But in the spring, instead of donating the proceeds from the class to a local nonprofit, they put the proceeds together and opened up a class Kiva loan account.
00:15:20
Speaker
So every year, people are microloans.
00:15:24
Speaker
And when I left YLI, the fifth grade class, fifth graders were managing a portfolio, a real portfolio of real $15,000 that they were really lending out to real people, that they were deciding what their loan application, which loan applications they would approve, they watched loans get repaid or not.
00:15:47
Speaker
and learned a lot of lessons from that.
00:15:49
Speaker
So lots of really good exemplars of what protagonism might look like.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, I love how that relates back to in the book with Klein, you have those eight different principles.
00:16:01
Speaker
And the very first principle that I love that really resonated was you say, it is false to set up education like a racetrack because students vary in their gifts and
Scaling Progressive Education
00:16:11
Speaker
needs.
00:16:11
Speaker
And when you design systems like you and I are talking about,
00:16:16
Speaker
the language of hitting people against each other or meeting some common assessment guide or planning guide,
00:16:25
Speaker
Doesn't really make sense anymore, because if someone asked, well, what is the thing that everyone's making?
00:16:32
Speaker
It's like it depends.
00:16:33
Speaker
I don't know.
00:16:34
Speaker
I don't actually have the end product in mind yet outside of maybe some stipulations that relate to some standard.
00:16:41
Speaker
But it's going to look very different student to student on what's being presented and how it's being presented.
00:16:46
Speaker
And there's a certain comfort level you have to have with the ambiguity of the process, both in terms of the design of it, but also the assessment of it.
00:16:55
Speaker
And we need to do a whole episode just on design thinking and this idea, because I think that that's where there's a whole conversation to be had just about that.
00:17:04
Speaker
It's really powerful.
00:17:06
Speaker
For sure.
00:17:06
Speaker
Let's talk about what that looks like to scale both from a student classroom lens up to then the school lens in terms of school leadership.
00:17:17
Speaker
Also using an element from the landscape model for learning, which is this idea of the ecosystem, the horizon, and the pathway.
00:17:26
Speaker
which is ostensibly the ecosystem of learning, the landscape model.
00:17:30
Speaker
Could you describe a little bit about what that is and then how that relates to scalability of these systems to school?
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, thanks.
00:17:38
Speaker
If I deviate and don't get to scalability, push me back to that.
00:17:43
Speaker
But the landscape model learning came from that metaphor that I think I felt as an educator at certain points in my career, I was lucky.
00:17:54
Speaker
I've always worked in schools that have been progressive in nature.
00:17:58
Speaker
But I certainly felt, and I know other people around me have felt at times, and specifically those in more traditional schools,
00:18:03
Speaker
that we were asked as teachers to start the school year first, you know, August 1st, September 1st, whatever it was, principal waved a checkered flag and, you know, and the kids were off.
00:18:15
Speaker
And if it were only that simple, right?
00:18:17
Speaker
If it were only that simple, if every kid started the year at the same day, if every kid started with the same, you know, metaphorical F1 racer, if they all started with a full tank of gas metaphorically, if they all already knew how to drive at the skill, same skill level, if, if, if, right?
00:18:31
Speaker
But it's not.
00:18:32
Speaker
And so the metaphor, Jennifer and I did tons of interviews.
00:18:38
Speaker
We talked to educators.
00:18:40
Speaker
We looked at this from a systems level.
00:18:42
Speaker
And our takeaway from the research was,
00:18:46
Speaker
We set up a metaphor that is false and therefore working in that metaphor becomes more work than finding the right metaphor and working in that metaphor.
00:18:55
Speaker
So it is more work.
00:18:57
Speaker
It is more work than a racetrack to start on a landscape and say, you know, it's the first day of school.
00:19:03
Speaker
13 of my 25 kids joined me on the meadow.
00:19:07
Speaker
But there's three kids like playing up on the hill over there with a different vantage point.
00:19:11
Speaker
And two of them haven't showed up yet.
00:19:12
Speaker
And as I kind of shepherd them across the landscape, inevitably at one point, one kid's going to be stuck in the bog over there.
00:19:20
Speaker
And I'm going to have most of my kids here with me.
00:19:23
Speaker
And I'm going to have to make a decision as a teacher.
00:19:25
Speaker
I mean, I feel this viscerally as a teacher, right?
00:19:28
Speaker
Do I leave these kids there?
00:19:29
Speaker
And do I go?
00:19:30
Speaker
How much time do I have to go help this kid?
00:19:32
Speaker
I go get them out of the bog.
00:19:34
Speaker
And to go meet the rest of the class, I have to decide to have the time to teach him how to swim and traverse the metaphorical river, the skill that he might need to catch up with everybody else, or just slap him on my back, let's cross the river, I'll teach you that skill later.
00:19:49
Speaker
If we plan, and this is what I think progressive education schools do really well, if we plan for a landscape of learning,
00:19:58
Speaker
Yes, it's more work and planning.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yes, it's a more complex metaphor.
00:20:01
Speaker
But if we lean in and acknowledge that learning is messy, learning is complex, learning is not four C's, three R's, it can't be alliterated into a clean number of things.
00:20:13
Speaker
And if we plan for that living dynamic diversity that is a landscape,
00:20:19
Speaker
the learning process itself is actually the teaching process that that that symbiosis is actually quite a bit easier um whether you're planning in uh you know some progressive schools like a multi-age setting planning multi-age is really difficult but if you plan and do it well it can be so
Reevaluating the Learning Loss Narrative
00:20:35
Speaker
much easier because you are already starting from the acknowledge you're starting from the point of acknowledging that kids are different and because i i actually worked with a um
00:20:45
Speaker
An amazing child psychologist.
00:20:47
Speaker
And she always made this point.
00:20:49
Speaker
She said, you know, until kids' brains are settled in and developed somewhere between the ages of 9 and 11, grouping them by 12 random chronological months is almost as random as grouping them by hair color or eye color.
00:21:05
Speaker
And that was her take on it.
00:21:06
Speaker
And multi-age is not the only answer for sure.
00:21:09
Speaker
But the landscape model of learning asks us to, number one, understand the ecosystem and understand that the different students, the teacher, the culture, the place, the school, the community around us, all of this plays a role in the ecosystem.
00:21:25
Speaker
We shouldn't be setting up a situation where we feel like we're on the freeway and we get into road rage, which is what we feel in school a lot, that we are in an ecosystem.
00:21:32
Speaker
We all push and pull and interact with each other.
00:21:36
Speaker
The second element is the horizon that kind of pushes on some of the work Yang Zhao has done, the jagged profile, that every kid has their own strengths, their own talents.
00:21:48
Speaker
Sure, as educators, we want to help them fill in their valleys, but also we shouldn't be filing down or ignoring their peaks and their genius.
00:21:58
Speaker
The kid who's going to go to Juilliard has a different profile than the kid who's going to go to Harvard Law, a different profile than the kid who I want as my ethical mechanic when my car breaks down, a different profile than somebody who's going to be a general in the army or a chef at a restaurant.
00:22:12
Speaker
And if we want, you know, that's the fallacy of much of the implementation of Portrait of a Graduate.
00:22:18
Speaker
that we're creating this like profile silhouette of a kid and everybody's supposed to fit into it.
00:22:24
Speaker
Right.
00:22:26
Speaker
So that's the second element, the horizon.
00:22:29
Speaker
And the third element is a pathway which pulls a lot from personalized learning, individualized learning.
00:22:35
Speaker
How do we help kids be their own protagonists, power their own pathway, but help them with goal setting and an individualized learning plan?
00:22:45
Speaker
to navigate and power their own journey across the landscape.
00:22:49
Speaker
Systems wise, to make a quicker point about that, we strongly believe from the research, from these case studies we've done, from all the reading we've gathered together and put into the book, The Landscape Model of Learning, that it does start with shifting the metaphor.
00:23:06
Speaker
And when we shift the metaphor from an industrial model to a living garden model, like Sir Ken Robinson said, from a racetrack model to a landscape model, like we've proposed very similar metaphor shifts, institutions need to do that.
00:23:21
Speaker
You can do it in your own class, but to really transform this in a profound way, schools and institutions need to make that shift.
00:23:29
Speaker
I think the other thing I would say from an institutional and scale level is I'll give a shout out to a really good friend of mine, Ross Wenner from World Leadership School.
00:23:38
Speaker
And I'll steal a quote of his.
00:23:43
Speaker
Education is humans teaching humans to be human.
00:23:47
Speaker
And we are at a point where I believe I've seen this because as a former school head, I get marketed products from software companies and publishers.
00:23:58
Speaker
The balanced literacy, science of reading war, in my humble opinion, and this may annoy people, we're caught in the middle of a publisher war, not a real philosophical war about reading.
00:24:09
Speaker
There's a great philosophical discussion to have, a pedagogical discussion, an instructional discussion to actually have about reading.
00:24:16
Speaker
But that's not what's happening.
00:24:17
Speaker
We're in the middle of a publisher war who's going to sell more curriculum and make more money.
00:24:23
Speaker
And, you know, what I've seen coming out of software companies right now is, like I said earlier, a nouveau matrix.
00:24:31
Speaker
And my fear is certainly for kids, kids at the center, but secondarily and almost as strongly that we are deprofessionalizing teaching.
00:24:43
Speaker
And we're moving away from humans teaching humans to be human with the aid of technology by using and leveraging AI, certainly by, okay, learning coding, of course, by designing, planning, building robotics, all of those things, sure.
00:24:59
Speaker
But when we plug kids into the matrix and give up our professional duties as educators and when that's taken away from us by the system,
00:25:11
Speaker
everybody loses.
00:25:12
Speaker
So at a systems level, I think getting back towards a human-centered, progressive ed, living dynamic landscape model of learning, there are some very complex steps, but at its core, it's really simple.
00:25:27
Speaker
It's just a really simple mindset shift.
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you're definitely pulling at my heartstrings with the human-centered languages.
00:25:35
Speaker
That is like the whole point of like what we're going for at least.
00:25:38
Speaker
And the
00:25:39
Speaker
And there's like 17 different routes to go from what you just said.
00:25:43
Speaker
But the one I'll choose is there's something very interesting about how leaning into kind of abstract thinking abstraction is at the cornerstone of what it means to be a progressive educator in many ways, because humans are complex and abstract.
00:26:01
Speaker
So although it requires a lot more work from a planning angle, because
00:26:06
Speaker
you're doing something real.
00:26:08
Speaker
And when something's real, it's messy.
00:26:09
Speaker
And people have messy personalities.
00:26:12
Speaker
There's a lot of different things to think about.
00:26:13
Speaker
And they don't fit within that, that little box that's laid out for them.
00:26:17
Speaker
But
00:26:18
Speaker
Once you get into that work, I found that although it is more work, the work feels different and therefore it's more rewarding as opposed to the person down the hall who is teaching the same as that curriculum for the last 20 years.
00:26:31
Speaker
They're taking home the same stack of papers they've taken home for the last 20 years and they graded every Friday and Saturday or whatever that might be.
00:26:37
Speaker
Whereas my idea of messy work is, hey, Monday after school, I have to go down to the zoo to meet with this person to figure out how the field trip is going to work.
00:26:45
Speaker
And then I need to go meet with so-and-so's parents because they know this one person.
00:26:49
Speaker
It's just more complex and rich and rewarding.
00:26:52
Speaker
But with that said, from that scalability perspective, I did want to dive into
00:26:56
Speaker
the course correction to that, which is, it seems like especially since the growth of education technology and even more curriculum work in 2019, 2020, there's been a regression of sorts toward more and more scripted curriculums, educational technology.
00:27:15
Speaker
The learning loss narrative was a big part of this, where it's becoming more and more difficult for folks to embrace this work because
00:27:23
Speaker
it's assumed that you're just going to follow the ABCD curriculum.
00:27:26
Speaker
You read this book this quarter, every kid reads it.
00:27:29
Speaker
And then we're going to do this predefined project for the last week over that thing.
00:27:34
Speaker
Um, I'm not really sure if there's a question baked into this, but I'm curious how you go about navigating that maybe from like a, what school could be perspective.
00:27:43
Speaker
Oh, I got tons of thoughts on that.
00:27:46
Speaker
Um,
00:27:47
Speaker
I let's start with the with the learning loss narrative.
00:27:52
Speaker
You know, I'll start by saying learning loss is and was real.
00:27:56
Speaker
Covid did impact kids.
00:27:57
Speaker
I'm seeing outputs with regards to speech and increased speech needs and and.
00:28:06
Speaker
We, you know, what school could be, we've done the research, we've pulled the graphs and the learning loss on average, 2%, maybe a little bit more, maybe 4%, if you look at certain indicators.
00:28:21
Speaker
When, from the beginning of these standardized tests that have been measuring these things to today,
00:28:31
Speaker
When we dropped everything and no child left behind and we stopped doing art, we reduced recess.
00:28:38
Speaker
We did science once a month, maybe.
00:28:40
Speaker
We stopped doing social studies, social, emotional, out the window, no more advisory, no more homeroom.
00:28:46
Speaker
We're going to just hyper-focus on reading and math.
00:28:48
Speaker
Our scores went up about 2.5%.
00:28:51
Speaker
Then in the most disruptive two years of education ever, during the Spanish flu, there wasn't K-12 schools organized the way they are now.
00:29:01
Speaker
Since K-12 schools with distinct disciplines have been around the most two disruptive years of school ever, our scores dropped only by as much as they gained by doing No Child Left Behind.
00:29:17
Speaker
If you zoom out of those hyperbolic graphs that were published,
00:29:22
Speaker
The line is literally flat.
00:29:24
Speaker
Like you can't even perceive the difference from the start of testing to today.
00:29:29
Speaker
So yeah, learning loss, of course.
00:29:30
Speaker
I have my own kids.
00:29:31
Speaker
I wish COVID went down differently for them.
00:29:33
Speaker
But if you really ask teachers, right?
00:29:35
Speaker
You really talk to teachers.
00:29:37
Speaker
What are they missing?
00:29:38
Speaker
Kids are coming back and they don't know how to interact with each other.
00:29:41
Speaker
The discipline is off the charts.
00:29:43
Speaker
They've lost self, even more so the executive functioning, the empathy.
00:29:48
Speaker
Those are the things that teachers I'm talking to are most concerned about.
00:29:52
Speaker
And I think all the teachers I'm talking to are saying, if those things are in place, I can get the reading and math on track.
00:30:00
Speaker
I can do it.
00:30:02
Speaker
But when these things aren't in place, but we don't have the strategies in most schools, we don't have the resources, we don't have the personnel, the expertise, the focus in most schools to do human-centered education.
00:30:17
Speaker
We need a human restoration project.
00:30:18
Speaker
We need what school could be.
00:30:20
Speaker
I don't need the landscape model.
00:30:22
Speaker
So, you know, I think it's that it's that learning loss narrative that I'm most.
00:30:29
Speaker
focused on as far as what's not working right now.
00:30:33
Speaker
And I guess one of the things I would offer to people, whatschoolcouldbe.org slash survey.
00:30:40
Speaker
What school could be, school could be singular school, whatschoolcouldbe.org slash survey.
00:30:44
Speaker
I'll send you the link.
00:30:47
Speaker
It's fun.
00:30:47
Speaker
It's kind of like one of those, like what Harry Potter houses are you?
00:30:51
Speaker
Literally take like 14 and a half seconds.
00:30:55
Speaker
But the survey asked the question, what decade is your school preparing kids for?
00:31:00
Speaker
1950, 1984, today or the future.
00:31:03
Speaker
And we're looking at that through seven different lenses.
00:31:11
Speaker
And we've developed a process called Peak through which we're able to provide schools a tool to reflect on their readiness for students to thrive in their 2050.
00:31:25
Speaker
Not our, you know, not today, but the students' future in a human-centered, but yet forward-thinking way.
00:31:33
Speaker
And from this assessment tool, we're working with schools and school districts right now on understanding what the data is saying, helping them figure out what their
00:31:43
Speaker
organic dynamic growth plans are moving forward and conferring to schools and school districts what school could be powered peak distinction to help schools elevate and differentiate themselves, give value to this type of work.
00:31:59
Speaker
Because so much of the work that, you know, I know Human Restoration Project's doing, Landscape Model Learning proposes, What School Could Be does,
00:32:07
Speaker
people ask us all the time, like, where's the data to show that it works?
00:32:11
Speaker
And where's my test score at the end that I'm going to improve?
00:32:15
Speaker
And my educational mentor, Bob Peters, has always said, you know, Kapono, good learning is good learning.
00:32:19
Speaker
Your test scores will go up because good learning is good learning.
00:32:22
Speaker
If you have the oomph to improve
00:32:29
Speaker
bear it and grin and bear it and just see that through, it'll probably happen.
00:32:34
Speaker
You know, your test scores may not skyrocket in a year or two of these types of practices, but certainly good learning is good learning.
00:32:40
Speaker
You work with the Human Restoration Project for, you know, two, three, four, five years, what school could be, landscape model.
00:32:45
Speaker
Your test scores are not going to be lower five years from now than they are today.
00:32:49
Speaker
Good learning is good learning.
00:32:50
Speaker
Human beings interacting with each other, valuing being there, wanting to be there, understanding how their own minds, hearts and bodies work in a learning environment will improve these things.
00:33:02
Speaker
But what the peak distinction process does is in the short term, medium term, long term, it allows schools to have a third party acknowledge the
00:33:12
Speaker
the positives they're doing and the innovation and progressive pedagogies and structures and be able to celebrate that publicly powered by, you know, all of the gravitas that is what
Future Skills over Standardized Testing
00:33:26
Speaker
school could be.
00:33:26
Speaker
So just ask, invite people to check out the survey and let us know if you need some help with that.
00:33:32
Speaker
No, I mean, I know that What School Could Be at a minimum is doing such amazing work in online communities that we've been super involved with by inviting people into the fold who, even if their school is not necessarily ready to take on a contract with any organization to promote this work, they feel less isolated as an individual to start promoting these practices at a grassroots level and then pushing it up from there.
00:33:57
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, going back to that analogy or
00:34:00
Speaker
not even an analogy, the real point of when you zoom out from, let's say the NAEP scores and you look at them over time, you don't really see the graph move.
00:34:08
Speaker
Where you would see the graph move is mental health, student engagement, the other things that we don't necessarily measure as rigorously as test scores, but at least in my opinion, are of a hell of a lot more important.
00:34:20
Speaker
And it just makes sense to me that if you believe that if you increase engagement and mental health at school, the test scores are going to follow no matter what.
00:34:29
Speaker
And if they don't,
00:34:30
Speaker
Who cares?
00:34:31
Speaker
Like the kids are more engaged and they're happier and healthier.
00:34:35
Speaker
It shouldn't be the end all be all that they got two more questions right on a multiple choice test on average.
00:34:41
Speaker
I would hope that isn't really what people show up to work for.
00:34:45
Speaker
I was just talking to this high school kid, maybe four days ago, asking him, he's a senior this year, what's he going to do next year?
00:34:51
Speaker
And he said, I need to take a gap year.
00:34:53
Speaker
I said, why do you need to take a gap year?
00:34:54
Speaker
They got a 1.67 GPA.
00:34:57
Speaker
And I'm like, what did you do to get that?
00:34:59
Speaker
He's like, I didn't know what I was doing in high school.
00:35:03
Speaker
But I think I do now.
00:35:04
Speaker
And I was telling him, you know, I think your 1.6 GPA and reflection is probably going to make you significantly more successful than if you, you know, just slid through with a 3.0, whatever, and did everything you needed to do.
00:35:18
Speaker
The learning that he had from having a 1.67 GPA, I'm sure was far superior than anything that a NAEP score could capture.
00:35:28
Speaker
And to your point, like,
00:35:31
Speaker
NAEP, SHMAEP, like those aren't the skills that are going to have students be successful in 2050.
00:35:36
Speaker
Those aren't the skills that are going to ensure that we don't find ourselves in the same election scenario four years from now.
00:35:43
Speaker
Those aren't the skills that are going to allow students to understand and deal with the potential dangers of misinformation, you know, due to anything, but specifically the dangers of AI.
00:35:55
Speaker
None of that is measured on NAEP scores.
00:35:57
Speaker
And all of that I would propose is far more important.
00:36:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker
There's definitely like almost accelerationist rhetoric that comes from the danger of continuing the course.
Real-world Skills and Education Metrics
00:36:10
Speaker
Especially when you simply go out into the community beyond the K-12 system and you ask business leaders, small business owners, volunteering efforts, even ironically, like admissions officers at colleges, what is it that you're looking for from young people?
00:36:27
Speaker
And we conduct a lot of these focus groups and we find that
00:36:30
Speaker
They're not mentioning GPA at all.
00:36:32
Speaker
What they're primarily concerned with are kids who, one, actually want to do something.
00:36:37
Speaker
Like they are motivated by some greater purpose to either major in a certain field or do the job, whatever that thing might be.
00:36:45
Speaker
And they want people that are critical, creative thinkers that can learn how to do things on their own.
00:36:49
Speaker
And that's so counterintuitive to the entire roots of how traditional education is currently embracing things like scripted curriculum, both for the learner, but also for the teacher.
00:37:01
Speaker
The teacher also doesn't have the capacity to engage in that way, even though they are far more than capable.
00:37:06
Speaker
And it feels very kind of, I guess, prison-like or carceral from everyone involved.
00:37:12
Speaker
But that said, the greatest irony I find in this work, if we talk about
00:37:17
Speaker
individuals who could, let's say, go on what school could be and learn more about your work is that I, this is all anecdotal, but both personally, but also with every educator that I've ever known that has engaged in progressive education, they always get highlighted by their school or by the state department or through some kind of award.
00:37:36
Speaker
It's like by intentionally disobeying the bureaucratic structures that are imposed that everyone thinks that you have to follow.
00:37:43
Speaker
That's what gets you all the recognition on how great of a job that you're doing.
00:37:48
Speaker
I received an Ohio Department of Education Award for some project I developed that hit half the standards of what I was supposed to be doing.
00:37:56
Speaker
And no one ever came and lectured me about it.
00:37:59
Speaker
We had a lot of fears about doing it, but it seems like it went okay.
00:38:02
Speaker
And that seems to be a tale as old as time.
00:38:04
Speaker
And that's just, it's both novel, but also heartening to know that
00:38:09
Speaker
Like if you just embrace this stuff and try doing it, a lot of those fears can be admonished.
00:38:14
Speaker
Although I do recognize the real tangible fear of like, well, what if it doesn't?
00:38:18
Speaker
Because there are spaces where that's a little bit more enforced.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, that risk for people is hard.
Supporting Innovative Educators
00:38:25
Speaker
I get it.
00:38:25
Speaker
The systems change, therefore, is important to provide some cover, right?
00:38:30
Speaker
I think a little rain does have a thousand flowers bloom in the desert.
00:38:34
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:38:35
Speaker
But without the irrigation infrastructure, they can wilt really quickly.
00:38:40
Speaker
So I feel it.
00:38:41
Speaker
Like there's teachers who are out there sticking their neck out day after day.
00:38:45
Speaker
And, you know, school leaders like me, we need to, even if small steps,
00:38:52
Speaker
help to put in that irrigation infrastructure that helps support teachers who are making this move.
00:38:58
Speaker
And through the peak distinction process, working with the Human Restoration Project, whatever it is, right?
00:39:05
Speaker
Like finding those celebrations and celebrating them
00:39:11
Speaker
is so important.
00:39:12
Speaker
I remember my first parent teacher meeting at Waialae Elementary, walking in to get the cafeteria set up and opening the door.
00:39:21
Speaker
And to the left was a group of about 40 kids.
00:39:24
Speaker
It was a school of about 600 and 40 of them were sitting there, multi-age, like literally from preschool to fifth grade, all different ages reading.
00:39:33
Speaker
And they were reading because they wanted to be after school, because that's where they went to hang out and read while they were waiting for their parents.
00:39:40
Speaker
Like, how much of a value would a parent, me as a parent, put on my kid coming home and wanting to read?
Celebrating Student Engagement
00:39:49
Speaker
because this is a positive and it's something fun.
00:39:52
Speaker
I mean, there's so many things that we can measure, highlight and celebrate beyond those test scores.
00:39:57
Speaker
And at Wyalai, that's one of the things we would tell parents after that experience when I did parent orientations for admissions.
00:40:04
Speaker
I'd say, you know, like our reading scores are fine.
00:40:07
Speaker
And if you want to send your kid to the school because of reading scores, this might not be that school.
00:40:13
Speaker
But I just walked in on 40 kids in the cafeteria reading because I want to.
00:40:18
Speaker
And if that's what you want, come on in.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's beautiful.
00:40:23
Speaker
I love I love everything about that.
00:40:25
Speaker
I figured I'd just give you a chance to talk about the work that you're doing right now at what school could be.
00:40:30
Speaker
I know you have the survey, you have the peak stuff going on.
00:40:34
Speaker
Can other folks get involved?
00:40:35
Speaker
What are your current things you're working on?
00:40:37
Speaker
What do you want to hype up?
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah, awesome.
00:40:38
Speaker
Thanks.
00:40:39
Speaker
I appreciate the opportunity.
00:40:40
Speaker
I am really excited about the peak distinction process.
00:40:44
Speaker
We are currently working with schools, school districts and provinces in Canada, as well as a couple international schools and an international school consortium of 41 schools using this peak
00:41:00
Speaker
assessment tool that we've designed to look at our seven areas, right?
00:41:05
Speaker
So we were looking at our five what school could be playlist areas, so to speak, mobilizing your community towards an uplifting vision, students driving their own learning, that protagonism we were talking about, real world challenge, bringing the real world into school and students out into the real world.
00:41:21
Speaker
Evan Brand Yates, Ph.D.: evidence of deeper learning finding elevating and celebrating evidence of learning beyond the test scores, which is what we're just talking about.
00:41:28
Speaker
Evan Brand Yates, Ph.D.: and caring and connected communities, creating communities that have a strong sense of belonging and caring.
00:41:33
Speaker
Evan Brand Yates, Ph.D.: From the five playlists from what school could be we've added to the peak distinction assessment leading the change how well is your school ready to lead the change.
00:41:42
Speaker
which does include some, you know, how well is your system and system leaders and senior leadership ready to lead the change, but also includes how well are we doing teacher leadership, distributive leadership and community leadership, and then being future ready, which obviously touches on things like AI, but not
00:41:58
Speaker
just AI, because that is maybe the tip of a much bigger iceberg that I feel also has, you know, climate change and social injustice and political unrest and disinformation and all those things under the iceberg, even though maybe AI is a tip of it that just is going to about to breach the hole.
00:42:13
Speaker
So we're working with schools, school districts, provinces, some international schools with this.
00:42:17
Speaker
I'm super excited about it.
00:42:19
Speaker
We're helping schools and school districts understand where they're strong in these areas.
00:42:25
Speaker
where they can develop.
00:42:27
Speaker
If we can help them develop, we have professional learning opportunities for schools to develop with us.
00:42:33
Speaker
If it's areas beyond what we do, we're connecting them with trusted partners like Institute for Humane Education and others.
00:42:42
Speaker
and sharing information about people that we work with.
00:42:45
Speaker
And then I think the part that, like I said earlier, that I'm most excited about, we're able to confer a distinction.
00:42:52
Speaker
Not because any of us in progressive ed are all about medals and distinctions, but because we do need the ability to stand up and celebrate in a vigorous way the learning and the
00:43:07
Speaker
and the joyous successes that we're having because there is so much weight on these NAEP scores and other things in those stupid supermarket tabloids of your, you know, 10 best rated schools in your district.
00:43:18
Speaker
We need other metrics and we need other ways to celebrate.
00:43:21
Speaker
So they can find out more by filling out the survey at whatschoolcouldbe.org slash survey.
00:43:28
Speaker
And we'll get back to you.
00:43:29
Speaker
They can email peak, P-E-A-K at whatschoolcouldbe.org.
00:43:34
Speaker
They can pick up the landscape model of learning book and engage with anything with what school could be and our amazing partners at Human Restoration Project.
00:43:43
Speaker
Hey, well, thanks, Capono.
00:43:44
Speaker
I'll put all of those links in the show notes.
00:43:46
Speaker
That way folks can check them out and be sure to reach out to you.
00:43:49
Speaker
But thank you again for joining us on the podcast.
00:43:52
Speaker
It's been a pleasure.
00:43:53
Speaker
It's been amazing.
00:43:54
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:43:58
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:44:01
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
00:44:05
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
00:44:09
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
00:44:16
Speaker
Thank you.