Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Jennifer Gonzalez says academic safety is necessary for learner-centered spaces
119 Plays2 years ago
2024 Tech Guide: https://cultofpedagogy.teachable.com/p/teachersguidetotech2024
Tech: digital portfolios, feedback tools like Mote, collaboration tools like Kanbanchi, discussion tools like Kialo and Parlay.
Street Data: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/street-data/
Music by AudioCoffee: https://www.audiocoffee.net/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction
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.
00:00:22
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.
Joining Teach Better Podcast Network
00:00:33
Speaker
The learner-centered spaces podcast is now a member of the Teach Better Podcast Network.
Jennifer Gonzalez's Journey
00:00:43
Speaker
We are so excited to have Jennifer Gonzalez, the editor-in-chief of Cult of Pedagogy. She was a middle school teacher for seven and a half years.
00:00:52
Speaker
and then taught pre-service teachers at the college level for more than four years. In 2013, she started Cult of Pedagogy, a website for teachers where she interviews classroom teachers and educational experts to explore best practices, classroom management strategies, social justice resources, and insights on how to use technology thoughtfully.
00:01:15
Speaker
And we are so excited to have you on today, Jen. I know that Cold to Pedagogy is definitely a space where I send a lot of the teacher teams that I work with because you have such amazing resources for folks, not only with your podcast, but what you've done with the website in terms of just getting amazing resources.
00:01:37
Speaker
And, you know, of course, we'll be talking today about your, your ed, your year in review on ed tech. So can you tell us a little bit about what started you on your current journey? Sure. First of all, thank you for all of those kind words. That's really, really sweet of you.
00:01:56
Speaker
So, I was a middle school language arts teacher, like you were saying, and I stopped teaching for a while to stay home and raise my kids. During that time, I worked part-time in a university to teach pre-service teachers, and I really loved it. And I thought, this is what I think I want to do, but I needed to get like a PhD or something in order to really do that for real at the university level.
00:02:22
Speaker
Basically, my kids were little and I thought, I don't know that I have the time to go through a full PhD program, but I had to take a couple classes just to keep my certification active. And so I took a couple of EdTech classes. One of those had us submitting all of our work through a blog, like a WordPress blog.
00:02:41
Speaker
And I was so extra in that class. I just, I did everything way, way, way more than any of my other classmates did. I always made sure I had a nice image and I, you know, and I thought, you know, I think I really like this.
00:02:56
Speaker
And then I had to learn how to make screencast videos because they had us cut way, way back on the amount of time that we could spend with student teachers. So I started turning a lot of the lectures that I had into videos that I submitted. And so all of a sudden I just realized I could be doing this, what I'm doing with these 30 to 40 students every semester on a larger scale.
00:03:20
Speaker
So I started Cult of Pedagogy in 2013 and I just decided instead of going the PhD route, I'm going to see if I can reach people through the internet and teach teachers that way. And it just, after that I learned how to make a podcast and then I just kept going and I never went back to the classroom after that.
Handling Criticism and Contribution
00:03:38
Speaker
And I've, you know, it's been, it's been proposed to me a number of times, you know, that
00:03:45
Speaker
that what I share, well, I shouldn't say this. It's been mentioned a few times by some internet trolls that because I'm not in the classroom, I have no business doing this.
00:03:55
Speaker
And my answer to that is if I were to go back to the classroom, I couldn't do this because I have learned so much more about teaching since I left the classroom because I've had the time to research things, to learn about what's going on in other classrooms. And that's the catch 22 of teaching full time is that you don't actually have a lot of time to perfect your practice. So I feel like I am doing a service for teachers by doing that legwork to help teachers do their work better.
00:04:24
Speaker
And I think you do. I mean, I don't, it makes me a little sad to hear that you get trolled about not being in the classroom anymore. And I know that that's always sort of been a concern of mine too, the further I get from it.
00:04:39
Speaker
But I think that you touch the lives of teachers in so many different ways with the materials you share that you don't necessarily have to be in the classroom to understand what teachers need, especially because you spend so much time talking to teachers still.
00:04:56
Speaker
That's, well, and that is really, first of all, thank you. And it's actually not as often, it's not that often, but when it comes up, it's still kind of irritates me. And so that really has been the approach that I've taken is to just keep featuring teachers on my site who are actively in their classrooms and they're sharing their best practices. And so, you know, as long as I feel like what I'm doing now is sort of pointing a spotlight on classrooms where things are working and try to share that with other teachers.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, I love that.
Creating Learner-Centered Spaces
00:05:28
Speaker
So to that end, can you tell us what a learner centered space looks like, feels like, sounds like to you and what tech best supports it? Yes. So I think just at a base level, there needs to be a foundation of psychological and academic safety. And what I mean by that is that I think people know the term psychological safety, but I feel like academic safety is really important too in that
00:05:56
Speaker
kids feel comfortable enough to take risks, to ask questions, to say, I don't know how to do this. I don't understand this. And I think that's a barrier that holds up a lot of classrooms where the teachers may not even know it's happening. And so I think there's a lot of things that we can do. And I wrote an article about it years and years ago to open up more academic safety for our students so that they can
00:06:22
Speaker
advocate for themselves and take more charge of their learning. I think a classroom that celebrates everyone's individual identity is important. Goldie Muhammad has done a lot of work in her field in terms of doing that, working on that. It's important for students obviously to have autonomy and choice, that the space is designed for movement and flexibility so that they can do that.
00:06:47
Speaker
And then in terms of the tech that can support that, I think there's so many different ways that it can. Obviously, digital portfolios where students can showcase their own work. There's a lot of platforms that do that. Feedback tools that the teachers can use with students, but also that students can use with each other. I think Moat has been an interesting one lately that allows us to give audio feedback on things like Google Docs.
00:07:15
Speaker
And with all of these things, I think it's nice for teachers to be able to use these, but also that we show the students how to use these things with each other because that is really the most learner centered thing we can do is put the tools in their hands and have them
00:07:32
Speaker
use them with each other. Then there's a whole suite of collaboration tools out there. Kanbanci is one I think that's built into Google Classroom that uses the Kanban method of sort of like Trello with all the different columns for organizing like a project that you're working on. And so if your classroom has a lot of project-based learning, which I think is very learner-centered,
00:07:57
Speaker
giving kids some tech that they can use to manage all of that can be really incredible. Because I also think that out there in the business world and in the career world, the startup world, those kinds of tools get used a lot when teams are working together on projects. So if we can show our students how to use those kinds of tools as kids, then they can take that out into the work world.
00:08:22
Speaker
And then there's discussion tools. There's Kialo and Parley that just kind of put some structure into classroom discussions and online discussions and can really enhance them. And any time we get our kids talking to each other, I think that's also a very learner centered practice. So that's just a little, that's actually a very long answer to all the different ways that we can make our spaces learner centered.
00:08:48
Speaker
So Jen, you just mentioned a whole bunch of different tools that I've never even heard of. And I don't know if it's indicative of the fact that I haven't been in the classroom for a while. How do you find these tools when you're making your tech study, your tech review for the year? So yeah, so
00:09:07
Speaker
The teacher's guide to tech is this PDF that we put out every January and it is an encyclopedia of tech tools. Teachers have come to me for years saying that they're just overwhelmed with all the choices and kind of what you're saying. It's like, there's, there's a lot I've never heard of. I feel like I should be. And so again, not enough time.
00:09:24
Speaker
So I actually have a team of four women who are all tech specialists in their own schools. And they, I used to do this by myself and I got help a couple of years ago because I couldn't handle it all. Um, and we basically just over the course of a year, as we hear about new stuff, we,
00:09:42
Speaker
We actually have a document that we call the dump. And we just put links in there. And then at the end of the year, we start looking into everything and deciding this is something that a lot of teachers are saying they're using. Here's something that's new. And we separate everything into 50 categories and show you how everything works. And so it's meant to help teachers just
00:10:06
Speaker
find what they need really quickly and also learn about some some really cool new tools. So I am now right now coming off of what is generally a two month cycle of updating the guide every year. And it's and it's horrible. And I'm so glad it's over. But it's a beautiful, beautiful guide that we just put out last week. And it's just it's just called the teacher's guide to tech. And that that's the idea is to help people like you learn about what's out there.
00:10:35
Speaker
We will put a link to that in the show notes as well and as well as all the tools that you mentioned. And I don't know if you know this, Star might know this, but I learned about Star through your podcast.
Inspiration and Impact
00:10:49
Speaker
And I am a math teacher. I'm not a language arts teacher, but I was listening to Star's episode on how she is ungrading and she was teaching journalism and language arts at the time.
00:11:00
Speaker
And I was just inspired. I was like, I have to, I have to know these women. I have to know more about this. I have to, and I think that was part of my beginning of my journey towards looking towards Leonard Center spaces, going towards ungrading. So thank you to both of you. Thank you to both of you for helping me to see the light if that's not too dramatic, but I feel like it's about right.
00:11:26
Speaker
I think that star, I don't know if that was 2014 or 15, it was a really long time ago now that she came on for the first time. I think you've been on twice now actually. The co-construction of success criteria was the last one. Yes, yes. And so those were pretty far apart. But yeah, I love hearing those stories when somebody talks about hearing somebody for the first time on my podcast and it sent them on a whole
00:11:51
Speaker
long, long journey. Crystal, did you hear the the Peter Liljedal interview to the? Yes. Okay, because that one I think is also just a huge one for math teachers. That was fantastic. And anytime Peter Liljedal is on a podcast, I'm going to listen to it. Yeah. Yeah. He's a brilliant, brilliant human. It's not just math teachers, though. I mean, I read his math book and was blown away by like, how
00:12:17
Speaker
easy some of the moves were and how his research had supported that. And when I work with math teachers now, I always reference his work because I feel like they judge me when they find out that I'm a humanities person. What am I doing, you know, helping them? Yeah. But what I love about both of your work, Jen and Star, is that it is accessible to the sciences and to the math teachers out there listening. And I think that you do you both do a great job of
00:12:47
Speaker
of helping us see how what you're doing in humanities does translate. And that leads to my next question, Jen, for you is about assessment. So what ideas do you have about assessment in a learner centered space?
Performance-Based Assessments
00:13:02
Speaker
This is a tricky question. I think that the more we can do performance-based stuff, I think sometimes teachers think that they have to create assessments that are quick and easy to grade and are standardized across the board so that everyone's taking the same thing. And I really hope that
00:13:21
Speaker
that there's been enough conversation now in the education world that has kind of proven out that these tests that we think, like everyone thinks, oh, a multiple choice test is so nice and simple and clean and has one right answer. And there's been so many people that have broken down how that's just not really the case, um, depending on how the question's written and how you interpret it and what the student's background is and all of that stuff. So I think when we can lean more toward
00:13:46
Speaker
performance-based assessments, project-based learning where the students are sort of making something with their learning. There's a sort of original end product of some sort where we can really see the application.
00:14:01
Speaker
as opposed to the student just kind of repeating an algorithm for us or something like that. That's where we really see whether the learning is sticking and is transferring to some kind of a new situation.
00:14:19
Speaker
The fact that we have Star in this conversation, I can still remember her periscopes years ago when she would sit in her car and talk about her conferences with students that she was having. And it was such a good example of how assessment doesn't even have to be this super complicated thing. It can be sitting and talking with students, figuring out what they know, what they're needing to know more about, and where they'd like to go moving forward.
00:14:48
Speaker
Ideally, that's really all we're trying to do. We're trying to figure out what do you know, what have you learned, and what needs to happen next. That can happen in a real variety of ways.
00:15:04
Speaker
I don't know that I have a real clear answer to that. I think a lot of it can come from looking at what other people are doing, getting to know our students. There's a strategy called, it's had a couple of different names, but where you've got like a back and forth, like a dialogue journal with a student. And this is something that we do in writing classes very easily. But I always felt like as an English teacher, I knew my students so much better because they would just keep journals.
00:15:34
Speaker
in class and I would read them. And so I had ideas of what they were, you know, what was going on in their lives and in their heads and so on. And so Dialectical Journal, I'm looking in the comments just now. Yeah. So this kind of knowing your students is such an important first step just for all different kinds of assessment.
00:15:55
Speaker
Thanks for that, Jen. I was giggling while you were talking because when I think about those morning periscopes, sitting on the curb because I literally wasn't allowed in my building yet, I would go to get a good spot in Queens where you just really can't park because my school didn't have a parking lot.
00:16:15
Speaker
And like, that's really how that all that live streaming happened. And the crazy thing was, was like six months after I started doing it, everyone started videoing themselves in their cars. I was like, right. And they started some weird trends here where people are.
00:16:32
Speaker
talking in their cars and the content was fantastic though. It was so reflective and it was such a good model for how you could in a very simple way, you know, assess with your students and help them to decide what they needed to do next. And it just showed that it did not have to be anything complicated.
00:16:56
Speaker
I love that. And I have a next question for you, which I think is a pretty good one for our listeners who might be new to this.
Tips for New Educators
00:17:05
Speaker
And if they're new to learning centered space, maybe they work in a school that's traditional or they really don't have a lot of freedom with how they're grading or how they're assessing. What advice do you give a teacher who's in a situation like that who just wants to get started?
00:17:21
Speaker
So for me, one of the best things I think any teacher can do to learn how they want to become as a teacher is to just go into other people's classrooms. You'll see stuff that you don't want to do and you'll see stuff that you never thought of. That's such a great idea, especially
00:17:38
Speaker
Well, not especially. This is also students that you teach, if you can see them in other classroom environments and how other teachers have structured things, it will give you ideas. And so I would start by maybe asking around who has a really learner-centered space, or you can almost tell by talking to the teacher sometimes how enthusiastic they are about their students or whatever, and go in and see what other teachers are doing.
00:18:05
Speaker
Sort of organically help you to sort of lift ideas that you want to take into your own classroom And I would also ask students the I did a series of videos and podcasts and everything with Jamila Dugan and Shane Saphir who are the authors of a book called street data and their whole approach to school transformation is
00:18:29
Speaker
is interviewing students, particularly seeking students who are at the margins, students who typically get ignored and neglected by the system to find out from them, how is school working for you? What's not working? What would you like to see that could be different? And it's meant to be a completely open-ended question. And from those interviews, they call them empathy interviews.
00:18:50
Speaker
They learned so much about things that they never would have even thought of. Or sometimes teachers in school spend so much money and energy changing things around, thinking it's going to make things better. And they never ask the students. And the students are sitting there like, we could have told you it. Really, we didn't need that. We just needed better access to water. If you could have gotten a water cooler in the back of the room, that would have made all the difference. It can be something much more simple than we're trying. But if we never ask them, then we'll never know.
00:19:22
Speaker
What you said just now about listening for teachers and how enthusiastic they talk about their students. I've never really thought of it that way, but you're right. That's a great way to, for lack of a better word, to sniff out others who are like you. And I'm an administrator and a teacher.
00:19:39
Speaker
And I often hear a lot of complaints and negative comments and, you know, Oh, the student is this and the student does this and I can never get him or her to do this. But I need to be perking my ears up more to listen to the teachers who are enthusiastic and have built relationships with the kids and
00:19:57
Speaker
No, it's not going to be perfect, but at least there's this optimism and this hope that they have for their kids. Those are the teachers that we need to be following. Those are the teachers we need to be going into their classrooms and watching what they're doing. Thank you for putting that in such concise language and helping me and our listeners to look for that and to know who to follow. Thank you. Thank you.
Influential Resources
00:20:20
Speaker
So Jen, you already gave some good shout outs, but are there any other people or platforms that you want to shout out to help our listeners build a learner-centered space for themselves?
00:20:34
Speaker
Yes. So we mentioned Peter Liljedal, who I think stands very, very high at the top of that pyramid. And then the street data, Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan, if we just Google the term street data, a lot of stuff will come up on that. I think Katlyn Tucker has done some really great work with blended learning in terms of
00:20:53
Speaker
Putting the work into the classroom and having the most learning happen in the room and so that you can use tech to sort of support that and duplicate yourself as a teacher so students can be independent you know as they're going along with their own learning.
00:21:10
Speaker
Then in terms of just design, I think Bob Dylan and Rebecca Hare have done some really great work. I did an interview with them just when they talked about how you actually set up the classroom and make it visually a place where students can learn. And then I also, I did a series years ago called Classroom Eye Candy, where teachers just submitted photos of their classrooms that just were great places for students to be in. All of them had elements of student centeredness.
00:21:38
Speaker
in that. So those are all just individual teachers who have done some really great work in their own classrooms.
Where to Find Jennifer's Work
00:21:47
Speaker
And where can our listeners find you online? If they go to cultofpedagogy.com, that is the hub. There are links to all of my socials there. There's links to the YouTube channel. You can get to my podcast from there. That would be the place to go.
00:22:02
Speaker
Well, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation and we really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you both so much. Thanks, Jen.
Conclusion and Feedback
00:22:12
Speaker
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. Learn more about Mastery Portfolio and how we support schools at masteryportfolio.com. You can follow us on Twitter at masteryforall.
00:22:32
Speaker
and on LinkedIn on the Mastery Portfolio page. And we'd love your feedback. Please write a review on your favorite podcasting app.