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00:00:01
Paul Emerich France says teaching can be sustainable
64 Plays5 months ago
www.maketeachingsustainable.org
paul@maketeachingsustainable.org
Music by AudioCoffee: https://www.audiocoffee.net/
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Goals
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast, where we empower and inspire ownership of learning, sponsored by Mastery Portfolio, hosted by Star Saxton and Crystal Frommer. In each episode, we will bring you engaging conversations with a wide variety of educators, both in and out of the classroom.
00:00:21
Speaker
This podcast is created for educators who want to learn more about how to make the shift toward learner-centered spaces for their students, schools, and districts, or education at large. The learner-centered spaces podcast is now a member of the Teach Better Podcast Network.
Paul Frans Introduction
00:00:41
Speaker
We are so excited to have Paul and Rick Frans on the show today.
00:00:45
Speaker
He is a coach and a consultant. He is also a national board certified teacher and a former elementary school teacher for 10 years. His passion is, if it's not sustainable, it's not best practice. Interesting fact about Paul, he plays piano and he loves to sing in his spare time. Please welcome Paul to the show today. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
00:01:11
Speaker
So Paul, I'm curious, I too went through the national board experience. I had national board, I think I got in like 2010, but unfortunately when it came time to renew, I had no classroom to do it in. You want to talk a little bit about your national board experience? We haven't had many folks who are certified on here and I think our listeners would really be interested.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, to date, it was both times some of the best professional learning I've ever been able to participate in.
National Board Certification Journey
00:01:50
Speaker
And I think part of that is that it is embedded into what you do, right? And I think that
00:01:58
Speaker
There's anything I've learned. I've learned a lot as a coach and consultant over the past couple of years. But when it's job embedded, when it's authentic to the teacher's experience, it's automatically 10 times better in terms of the potential for professional learning. And I've experienced that twice now with National Board. So I achieved certification in 2014 as a middle childhood generalist. Excuse me.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I mean, it's hard. It is not easy to do. You have to really know the standards super well, which I think speaks to just the importance of clarity in terms of professional learning. We talk about learning targets a lot and standards a lot with kids, but one of the strengths of National Board is they're so clear in what they value and they're so clear in what they believe good teaching to be. And it's research-based. It's not just that they believe it, right?
00:02:53
Speaker
These things are grounded in what we know to be true about teaching. And then they really hold you accountable to it. And I think some folks would say, well, the writing element of National Board does create barriers for some folks. And it absolutely does. And I think that that needs to be considered as National Board continues
Innovative Certification Renewal
00:03:13
Speaker
to grow. However,
00:03:14
Speaker
like the degree to which I had to articulate what I was doing and why I was doing it and also this element of knowledge of students like they're just always like knowledge of students knowledge of students knowledge of students and and it's like things you wouldn't necessarily think to to write about you know my national board
00:03:35
Speaker
cohort coach would be like, yes, like, you know, that student has anxiety, write that down. That's really important to who they are and how you're going to work with them. You know, so just really it, it really ingrained this sort of way of thinking in me. And, um, I was lucky enough last year. So my, so, so my certification is actually up this year, but I just got my maintenance of certification certificates. I'm NBCT for another five years. And it's funny star that you say, um, that you didn't have a classroom because I didn't either.
00:04:02
Speaker
but I work with so many schools and I am in so many classrooms that
00:04:10
Speaker
I was like, well, I wonder if I can just, and the way that I coach and the way I consult is like, I go in, I model. The kids at the schools know me now. And so I was like, I know a lot of these kids well enough. I probably could use a classroom for maintenance. And so I emailed some teachers and I just said, and it was April of last year when I did this. And I was like, hey, would any of you
00:04:33
Speaker
Would you be willing to let me take over your classroom for a week so I can do my national board maintenance of certification? And of course, teachers in April are like, yes, absolutely. You can take over my teaching for a week. And so I did that. And again, it was just the same experience. This time I did it from a slightly different lens. And I looked at math journaling.
00:04:57
Speaker
Those were the videos I took were math journaling last year. And it just, again, was just an amazing experience. I'm kind of over talking it now, but I recommend it to anybody who's considering it. It's not easy, but it is so worth it.
Reflective Teaching and Learner-Centered Spaces
00:05:14
Speaker
I totally agree with you. I often say when people ask me about it, I say it is the best professional learning I ever got and I had no idea why I wasn't getting
00:05:27
Speaker
feedback that I noticed in my videos from my administrators. I noticed troubles I had with wait time. I noticed certain things about myself in the classroom answering my own questions as an issue that came from that lack of wait time. And it was so eye-opening, the reflective aspect of what was going on, that that is one of the things that prompted me to start bringing reflection into my classroom.
00:05:56
Speaker
because it was so powerful for me to see my learning in a way, see my teaching in a way, and then my own learning of that teaching that I wanted to implement metacognition and more self-assessment sort of practices in my classroom because of how powerful it was for me.
00:06:18
Speaker
I'm glad that your experience also kind of followed that as well. And my coaching as well and my consultancies are also very much like what you described where I'm in classrooms, I'm working with teachers, the kids know me, but I didn't think to ask somebody to let me go into their classroom at that time. So that was really smart.
00:06:39
Speaker
And I mean, I guess what I could do now is kind of bring this back to our conversation about learner-centered spaces. How did the National Board experience help you amplify the idea of what a learner-centered space is? So like, what do you look, what does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like when you're actually in one of those spaces?
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I mentioned this already sort of, um, but this idea of knowledge of students, right? Like that is, that is so foundational to national board. And, um, I think that's also foundational to creating learners, learner centered spaces. Right. Because if we don't know who our students are.
00:07:25
Speaker
I want to use that phrase, know who our students are as expansively as possible. So that can include their identities, you know, or their group identities or, you know, that sort of thing, but can also include what they know, what they don't know, what their challenges are, what their strengths are. You know, so I think not knowing students well is going to help us create learner-centered spaces.
00:07:50
Speaker
But also then, you know, if we're creating spaces where it's possible for us to get to know students really well, then that also means it's possible for us to create spaces where students can get to know themselves even better. You know, identity is not fixed and there's parts of us
00:08:13
Speaker
I mean, this is true for adults, and if it's true for adults, it's gonna be even truer for kids. But there's parts of, we're always learning about ourselves, right? And I mean, I know as a 35-year-old adult, I'm learning about myself every day, and the same is true for our kids as well. And so in a learner-centered space, we should have a way for kids to continue to learn about themselves and to continue to reflect, which I think, you know,
00:08:36
Speaker
That goes into, I was talking about journaling before and how I was using journaling for math instruction for a national board recertification. And journaling is, I think, such a great way to help kids get to know themselves because it pulls them away from like your traditional workbook or worksheet based teaching where they're just kind of like filling in boxes or answering questions. And instead, journaling is about helping them explore different ways to get to an answer or different ways to approach a task or
00:09:02
Speaker
different ways to interpret a text. And then there's also an element of journaling in classrooms where kids are actually reflecting on what went well for me today, what didn't go well for me today, or whose response did I learn from, or what can I do differently tomorrow to be more successful. And so this all just ties back into that idea of knowledge of students because not only are we learning a lot about kids through
00:09:26
Speaker
journaling or other just, you know, qualitative assessment practices, but we're also making it possible for them kids to learn about themselves and reflect on their strengths and their challenges and their learning habits. So can we go backwards just a little bit, Paul? I think you have an interesting story that we didn't capture when we were recording. And I wanted to hear for the listener's sake about a defining moment in your education journey.
Challenging Moments in Teaching
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah, well, there's been a lot. I mean, teaching is never boring, right? There's always something interesting happening in an elementary school classroom. But yeah, I think one of the first defining moments for me, you know, when I think about my story as a teacher is in my fourth year teaching, so that would have been 2013,
00:10:23
Speaker
At that point, I'm from Illinois. I'm from Chicago. And at that point, Illinois had just legalized marriage equality in our state. And to make a very long story short, one of my colleagues wanted to do a lesson about it. And I was a little nervous because I was the only openly gay person on our team at the time. But we decided to move forward with it. And again, to make a very long story short, we got in huge trouble for trying to do it.
00:10:52
Speaker
And it was really hard. I mean, it was really hard, one, to put effort into something that was then, you know, that we were not allowed to talk about or to put all that effort, I should say, into something that we were then not allowed to talk about. But then also just as a queer educator, it was really hard to witness my school district very, very clearly say, you know, we're not comfortable with talking about people like you in school.
00:11:21
Speaker
And it's defining for me because it really guides me. You know, like we've already talked a little bit about knowledge of students today. I think identity is a huge part of that, right? And when kids don't feel like they can see themselves in the classroom, when they don't feel like all of them is welcome in the classroom, then there's no way we can make a learner-centered space.
00:11:40
Speaker
because kids aren't going to feel safe and so that now that experience just knowing what it feels like to be explicitly marginalized at school it just guides me and I don't ever want another teacher to feel that way and I don't ever want a kid to feel like we can't talk about people like them or see people like them in our schools.
00:12:05
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that and I'm really sorry that you and your colleagues and your students had to go through Something painful like that. I'm curious. How do you think that would play out today?
Inclusivity in Education
00:12:19
Speaker
this many years I Mean well, what's what's ironic about it all is that this I remember the superintendent this this blew up so much the superintendent came to see me and I had a I had a
00:12:32
Speaker
union president was with me at the time. So shout out to unions for keeping teachers protected in situations like this.
00:12:40
Speaker
And he came to the classroom and my classroom had to have a conversation with me. And he was like, you know, Paul, this isn't personal. You know, this is just, we're not ready for this yet. Maybe in five or 10 years, this was 10 years ago. You know, he's like, this isn't personal. Maybe in five or 10 years. And I said, you know, I can't help but take this personally. You're telling me I can't talk about people like me in school. There's no way I can't take that personally. And he just sort of nodded and said, yeah, maybe in five or 10 years.
00:13:06
Speaker
And look at what's happening five or 10 years later. There's now explicit legislation that's banning books that even marginally mention the LGBTQ community, even if it's just a book with two dads. I think that's a big misconception. People think that by welcoming gay families into the classroom that we're going to suddenly be talking about things that are not
00:13:34
Speaker
you know, not appropriate for kids. And it's like, we're not looking to sexualize the queer community, especially in elementary school, right? We're just looking to be inclusive and let kids see that, hey, there's different types of family structures and there's different types of clothes you can wear. And it's really sad to see what it's turning into.
00:13:54
Speaker
This was exactly my fear 10 years ago, right? It's like, if we don't start talking about it now, we're never gonna start talking about it. There's always gonna be a reason not to. And in those situations, what are we doing? We're prioritizing adult comfort over the inclusion of everybody. And we're prioritizing adult comfort over the wellbeing of kids. And it's really just, it's sad and it makes me angry.
00:14:22
Speaker
You know, so it's, I don't think that the conversation would play out as well today. I actually, I actually reached out to the school district. I can't believe I'm gonna tell you this, but I reached out to the school district a couple of years ago and just to, I wanted an apology from them because it was really impactful, you know, to me. And they just, they just said, you know, the matter's closed and they, you know, they wouldn't respond to it further.
00:14:48
Speaker
I really don't think the conversation would have gone that much better. I think a lot of people think Illinois too is like this really liberal blue state and it is to a certain extent, but you have areas that are very conservative still and where I used to teach is still relatively conservative. So I don't think it would go any better to be perfectly honest with you as sad as that is. I wish I had a more optimistic response to that question.
00:15:15
Speaker
As I'm listening to you speak, Paul, like, first of all, like heartbroken that you had to experience what you did and that you were treated the way that you were. And part of what you were saying is like, I recently moved to Florida.
00:15:34
Speaker
And I have great fear about helping educators down here because of the very restrictive laws that exist currently on the books that actually criminalize a lot of the things we're talking about.
00:15:49
Speaker
um and it's frightening to me as as a you know as a people as folks are like as there's now language to express so many of the identity pieces that you're speaking about as well as the racial parts of it like now that we have really clear language on these things and more folks are speaking up
00:16:11
Speaker
about where they come from and who they are and wanting to celebrate those things as they should have the right to do. The backlash of all that has really been so sad and the fact that you know all these years later you don't think it would be any better and it would probably be worse is whoo.
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's sad. It's really sad. I mean, I wasn't actually in Texas last year and I had to the, these two wonderful women hired me and you know they're very equity focused and very, you know, supportive of talking about identity in schools and their personalized learning folks right so like they, they get it, and, and
00:16:55
Speaker
to make another long story very short. Basically some parents got wind that I was going to be there and it went on Twitter and you know within a couple days the CAO of the school district, a big school district is you know emailing me to set up a meeting and he basically went through my whole presentation and like he didn't basically, he did. He went through my whole presentation and he redacted certain things. You know I had to change
00:17:20
Speaker
my terminology. I couldn't say the word identity. I couldn't say humanize. I couldn't say these things that are just so central to my work. And while it's frustrating, and while I hear what you're saying, Star, it has forced me to be a little more strategic in how I implement this work. And I think that the silver lining here is that you don't have to necessarily explicitly, like if you have to work within the constraints of
00:17:48
Speaker
these oppressive constraints. I don't want to even normalize them or legitimize them for a second, but if you have to work within them, there are ways to pursue equity work and to create learner center spaces without having those explicit conversations. And I think when you embrace a pedagogy of student voice and student choice and you create avenues for kids to really be the narrators of their own learning journey, then you can sort of
00:18:18
Speaker
I don't want to say you can get around that, but you can at least like, what's the word soften the edges of it. I think you're spot on there. I mean, a lot of what you were describing, that was the space I worked in New York City public schools.
00:18:38
Speaker
I mean, because students were allowed to really, I tried to create a safe culture in the space where kids respected each other and understood each other as well as, you know, I was kind of secondary to all of that. But I was also the teacher that a lot of kids came to when they needed to talk about things that they couldn't talk to anybody else about. And so I was involved in a lot of those conversations that you were talking about, about knowing your kids really well,
00:19:07
Speaker
and getting them help when they needed it or putting them in the right direction if their families weren't open to some of the things that they were sharing. And, you know, if unfortunately with that too, and I'm like trying not to cry thinking about it, like I had a bunch of suicidal kids that I had to work with because of that, parents throwing them out and making them homeless
00:19:34
Speaker
It's hard, it's hard to think about and thinking about your experience too is like, I don't know, it makes me really sad for us. And I hope that even with your softened edges, you find a way to say your message and keep helping kids and other teachers understand that. Yeah, it is sad. And it's hard to think about how
00:20:06
Speaker
It's hard to think about the potential consequences like what you're describing, right? That like this is, for some kids, this is a life or death situation. But yeah, I think I'm just sitting in the sadness with you there right now.
00:20:25
Speaker
Well, can I ask here, because I think it's beautiful that you've taken away from this painful experience that the way that you want your students to feel, you never want your students to feel like they can't talk about themselves or be themselves in your classroom. And that has guided you as an educator for these last decade.
Shifting Toward Learner-Centered Spaces
00:20:45
Speaker
And I think that's a beautiful takeaway from something so horrific. So my follow up to that is, what advice do you have for educators
00:20:54
Speaker
who might be in a position where they can't be themselves, or they can't let their students be themselves, or they can't be even a learner-centered environment because it's a pretty traditional type of setting. What advice do you give to teachers like that who really want to do what's best for kids? Well, I think it's always possible to move towards learner-centered
00:21:20
Speaker
learning centered teaching or learning centered spaces, no matter where you're teaching. And I think that when we, I think one of the problems with, with shifting towards more progressive practices in general is that we, we not like anyone specific, but the Royal we, right? Like education, the education space in general, we can be very black and white about things.
00:21:42
Speaker
We're either learner-centered or we're not. We're either learner-centered or we're traditional. We're either progressive or we're, you know, archaic. And I think that, and I've seen this work in my experience as a coach, that when we focus on incremental shifts in practice, then we actually can move teachers towards more learner-centered practices. Because the reality is, right, like learner-centered practices could, like Star, you mentioned wait time before, right?
00:22:07
Speaker
That's a learner centered reflection and a way to give kids more voice, right? That's not some radical, some radical progressive idea, right? That's just wait time and it's something you can do in any setting. And then there are more like, you know, significant shifts like shifting to project based learning or even, you know, learner driven assessment. Those those are those can be pretty significant shifts, you know, and those aren't going to happen overnight. And so in my work,
00:22:37
Speaker
Well, I think in order to incrementally shift practice, I think it is critical that we take an asset-based approach to professional learning. So like teachers are going to be turned off by changing if they think a coach is coming in to just get them to teach differently because they're a bad teacher, right?
00:23:00
Speaker
But if we take an asset-based approach and we look at what is working for teachers and then ask them, hey, what problems can I help you solve in your classroom? That's a completely different conversation than the principal sent me in here because on the Danielson framework, it shows that you're basic in this area and blah, blah, blah, blah. That is disincentivizing. That's not learner-centered in an adult way. So if we want learner-centered spaces for kids,
00:23:26
Speaker
Professional learning has to be learner centered as well for the adults and I find that when I go in with that with that from that angle, you know that like
00:23:39
Speaker
How can learner-centered teaching actually help you solve some problems in your classroom? How am I increasing your wait time or asking questions differently or using open-ended tasks? How might that actually make your life a little bit easier? Meanwhile, also be better for kids. I find that that right there, that framing of this, it's
00:24:00
Speaker
it's just a way to like build that bridge with teachers and then actually move towards learner centered teaching. So I think it's possible anywhere. It's just about how you frame the conversation and what that shift in instruction actually is. Yeah, I think all of those tips are super
00:24:21
Speaker
super good and even just thinking about all of the different things you just offered. Are there particular people you would like to shout out who are able to do these things that you think people should be aware of? Are you talking about the coaching things or the practices in general?
00:24:42
Speaker
practices, like folks, folks that we might want to look up or know more about their journeys, or will you follow who you think do a really good job with the particular strategies you're talking about? Yeah. Well,
00:25:00
Speaker
I just had an amazing conversation with Dr. Kallen Tucker. She was on the Make Teaching Sustainable podcast, and she is an advocate for learner-centered teaching. She uses her station rotation model, and she and I had a great conversation about what you're using that. In her station rotation model, one of the stations will be a teacher station.
00:25:26
Speaker
So basically she identifies, you know, what are the things, this is something she said in the podcast. She's like, what are the things I know I'm going to basically say the same to all kids. If there's, if I'm going to basically explain this concept or this idea in the same way to all kids, well, then that's appropriate for a video, you know, bite-sized video, three to five minutes, I can give them a, you know, a station where they learn about using semi-colons or something like that. Right. Um,
00:25:54
Speaker
And then that's something that they can do on their own when they're ready for it. But her teacher station then is focused on like actually giving quality feedback in a smaller, more intimate setting in the moment to create a short feedback loop so that kids can initiate improvements to their work like in the moment. And what that does for her is, well, one, it's great for kids, right? We know short feedback loops are the way to accelerating growth, right? So that's good for kids, but it's also really good for her because she's not taking home a bunch of
00:26:21
Speaker
Papers over the weekend writing comments on them and then just hoping the kids read them and then incorporate them into their work, right? She's actually using her class time. She's changed. She changed. She's changing the way she's using her class time moving away from like a traditional lecture based lesson right in order to
00:26:40
Speaker
have more face time with kids and have rich conversations with them. So that's just like one, that's one person that's, you know, does a lot of personalized learning work and that, and just one example of what that can look like. But it's such a powerful example of like, it's really not a major shift in terms of
00:26:59
Speaker
I mean, I guess in some ways it is, right? Having kids learn through, uh, blended learning is somewhat of a shift, but like what she's doing, the idea of just giving feedback to kids in class, that's not necessarily a hugely radical idea, but it does require, you know, changing the way you structure learning in your classroom. Thank you. And I know you have this wonderful book out and can you tell us more about the book and also where our listeners could find you online?
00:27:26
Speaker
Sure.
Resources for Sustainable Teaching
00:27:27
Speaker
Um, so I mentioned that Dr. Tucker was on the make teaching sustainable podcast. Um, so that's the title of my book. It's called make teaching sustainable, um, six shifts teachers want and students need. And I wrote that, um, after conducting the sustainable teaching project in 2021.
00:27:45
Speaker
where I surveyed hundreds of teachers and administrators and coaches and conducted over 40 hours of interviews on what might make teaching more sustainable moving forward. And so that's my latest book. I have a book called Reclaiming Personalized Learning, which really aligns well with this conversation on learner-centered spaces, though I do argue and make teaching sustainable as well that being more learner-centered and giving kids more agency actually is more sustainable for teachers in the long run because we're sharing the energy demands of learning with kids.
00:28:13
Speaker
So you can find both of those books on my website at MakeTeachingSustainable.org. And then I'm on Instagram and Twitter at SustainTeaching. And then if anyone wants to email me, you can just email Paul at MakeTeachingSustainable.org. Thank you for learning with us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. If you'd like any additional information from the show, check out the show notes.
00:28:42
Speaker
Learn more about Mastery Portfolio and how we support schools at masteryportfolio.com. You can follow us on Twitter at masteryforall and on LinkedIn on the Mastery Portfolio page. And we'd love your feedback. Please write a review on your favorite podcasting app.