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Jessica Lander invites students' voices to the space
39 Plays14 days ago
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Introduction and Podcast Goals
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Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast where we empower and inspire ownership of learning. Sponsored by Mastery Portfolio, hosted by Starr Saxton and Crystal Frommert.
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In each episode, we will bring you engaging conversations with a wide variety of educators, both in and out of the classroom. This podcast is created for educators who want to learn more about how to make the shift toward learner-centered spaces for their students, schools, and districts, or education at large. The Learner-Centered Spaces podcast is a member of the Teach Better podcast network.
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Get ready to be inspired as we dive right into the conversation with today's guest. We are so excited to have Jessica Lander on the show today.
Introducing Jessica Lander: Background and Achievements
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She's an award-winning teacher, writer, and author. She has taught history and civics to recent immigrant students in a Massachusetts public high school and has won numerous awards for her teaching, presented by the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. a 2023 MA Teacher of the Year finalist, presented by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and a Top 50 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize in 2021, presented by the Varkey Foundation. Jessica writes frequently about education policy and teaching.
00:01:36
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She is the author of Making Americans, Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education. Recently awarded the 2024 George Orwell Award, presented by the National Council of Teachers of English, to quote, writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse.
00:01:58
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a co-author of Powerful Partnerships, a Teacher's Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success, and the author of Driving Backwards. We've got to ask her about that. ah We are so happy to have you on the show, Jessica. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me on the show. Wow. What a list of accomplishments. um So can you tell our listeners about a defining moment in your education journey?
A Pivotal Teaching Experience in Thailand
00:02:26
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There's a whole bunch that come to mind, but I think one that really sticks out to me is near the end of my first year of teaching. So I had gone on a fellowship to teach in Northern Thailand at a university, Chiang Mai University, and my plan was really to go into education policy.
00:02:49
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um But I thought it was really important that before going into education policy, I had real experience in the classroom that I wouldn't take myself seriously if I didn't have that experience and I didn't think anyone else should. And so I moved across the country. Actually, it was a whirlwind. I graduated on a Tuesday, packed up my bag, drove home, unpacked my bag, repacked my bag, flew to Thailand Friday, landed on Sunday and was teaching at university Monday morning.
00:03:19
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and yeah um wow i yeah um And I taught for that year with, again, the goal of just teaching for one year and then moving into policy work. And ah I so vividly recall my last class. And after my last class, driving my motorbike to a nearby what? A temple in Chiang Mai.
00:03:42
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And just sitting in um outside this temple weeping, because I knew that this class we had created together of all of my students and all the the quirks that we brought to the classroom and the the learning we had done together, that that was over. um And that we might still stay in touch, but the the community we had formed was gone.
00:04:09
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And I realized in that moment that I needed to stay in the classroom. And that was back in 2010. And I've been in classrooms for the most part ever since. Wow, what an incredible story.
What Makes a Learner-Centered Space?
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So given all of your experience in education, how would you describe a learner-centered space? like What does it feel like and sound like to you? um there it It sounds and feels and looks like a whole range of things. I think first really important way to share is that so I have for much of the last decade had the the honor and the joy of teaching recent immigrant and refugee students from around 30 different countries.
00:04:50
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um And that I think it's really important for when I think about like what does a learner centered space looks like is thinking about how to to center my students stories, um how to center their many, many identities and strengths that they're bringing to our classroom and our communities, um their voices, um wanting my students to see themselves as teachers and leaders.
00:05:15
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And I think it's that um range of aspects that really guide how I try to set up our classroom, really very much trying to co-create it with my students, um directs the type of curriculum I'm doing, and I can jump into that, um but it comes down to really wanting to center in my students' stories, identities, and voices. And so what does that look like?
00:05:38
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um it It looks like wanting to make sure my students see themselves reflected in our classroom. It's reflected on the walls of our classroom. um So our our classroom is lined around the ceiling with flags from every country represented by our students.
00:05:58
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it's it's seen in the this com corner that we have in the the corner of our classroom that has this huge paper tree like 3D tree that comes out of it that's a space where if you're as a student feeling that may be sad or upset or angry or just needing an alone type of day you can sit in this com corner that's filled with herbs from all around the world and you can be smelling and sort of touching these herbs while still being in our class, still being part of the class, but like centering like what do you need um to be most present and like where are you and like what are the supports you need. um It's the the social justice library that's in our classroom that's now, I think, more than 300, 400 titles large, where I really want my students to see themselves in the titles in those books. and so
00:06:52
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ah filling their shelves with books about newcomers to this country from all over the world so that my students can all find books there that um will have elements of their stories but maybe also elements of their classmates stories.
00:07:07
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um And then it's also in the curriculum of centering the history of immigration. um For me, this has been a particularly interesting part of researching my book and then sort of taking that learning and applying it to the classroom is that a lot of the history of immigration that I researched and wrote about for my book, I never studied. um I didn't know until I set out to write this book. And it's really vital history. It's really important for all of us to know.
00:07:34
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And so wanting to make sure we're centering that history of immigration for all students. And I think it's particularly important for my immigrant origin students. And so it's one, it's like, what does our classroom look like? That is a space that centers them. there They see, hopefully, um that their identities, their voices, their stories are really important and essential for us. It's a place that is co-created.
00:07:57
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that like I can set up all of these different aspects, but it's us doing that work together that will make it come to life. And then it's also how i my goal in creating sort of a learned-centered space is also learned-centered work is what are the projects, what the work we're doing in the classroom very much, again, trying to center voices, stories, histories, and identities. And so a lot of the the bigger projects we do in my class are ones that are very much student-led, where students have those opportunities to share their strengths, their their passions, their histories. we So for example, yeah early in the year, my students write a cookbook. And they each choose a favorite family recipe. And they have to then go home and collect that recipe from their family, because you know the internet recipes are never as good as mom's recipe.
00:08:53
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And then they work to share that recipe and then also story about that food. And we put this together into a cookbook. They actually cook the food, bring it into class, and we all try each other's foods. But then we um we put this into a cookbook and we publish and we share it in the community. um And so really centering our students' history is really important for everyone to be studying and learning from. Or then later in the year,
00:09:19
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they learn how to write op-eds, but on issues that they care about in the community, either in our community in Lowell or in maybe their home country. And they're they're learning how to advocate for issues they care about. And then some of those op-eds are published in the city's newspaper for 100,000 people to read.
00:09:38
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And there are a number of other projects like this, but really trying to center my students' identities, stories, voices, and really hoping for them to see that they are teachers and leaders and like driving the learning in our classroom.
00:09:52
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Wow. i Can you remind us what grade this is that you're teaching? Absolutely. So I have the joy of teaching high school students, mostly 11th and 12th graders, but a lot of my students have had interrupted education. And so maybe their education has been interrupted but because of war or because of different types of violence in home country.
00:10:14
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maybe because of how long their migration has taken or maybe because of economic reasons. And so the ages of my students um can span anywhere between like 15 years old to about 21 years old.
00:10:29
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Okay. And that, that leads me to the next questions. because I know you're the author of Power for Partnerships, a teacher's guide to engaging families for student success. And I'm curious with, with teaching older students ah from, you know, upper high school grades, early, you know, you mentioned early twenties, how do you go about engaging families?
Engaging Families as Collaborators
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Oh, yeah. So um now I'm really honored to be able to co-author this book with Professor Karen Mapp at the Harvard Ed School and with extraordinary teacher Eileen Carver. um And what was wonderful was to be able to think about how we do family engagement at different levels. um And what are the similarities of doing family engagement with littler kids? And what are the differences? And so for me, thinking about high school, I mean, and For all grade levels, I hope that teachers see families as key collaborators. For me, they're the most essential collaborators for the work of supporting their young people in the classroom and out. But it does look different than it does for little kids, and in particular, it looks different.
00:11:41
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for my kiddos, because for some of my kiddos, their families might not be here in Lowell or in the US with them. So some of my students have traveled on their own to the US. Some of my students are living with maybe an aunt or an uncle. Some of them are living with mom or dad, but maybe haven't lived with mom and dad for a long time and grew up with maybe ah a grandparent.
00:12:08
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um and then move to the US s to live with mom and dad. And so thinking about who in their family, what adult ah figures in their family they're really deeply connected to. And so how to engage with um lots of different members versus maybe a traditional like, I'm just gonna be trying to communicate with mom or dad and having kids be part of that conversation of like, who are the adults in your life that you would really like to me to be learning from?
00:12:34
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And then thinking about how do we communicate with them. So is it WhatsApp? Because I'm talking with a mom who's still in Cambodia, or a dad who's in Brazil. um I think there's ah another really important element of thinking about family engagement at the high school level of, I think traditionally, we have thought about, or we've messaged, and we being schools have messaged that at the high school level, kids should be more independent, and like families should take a step back.
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But ah honestly, I think the opposite is true, that students really, really need their family support, particularly at high school. And so how do we as schools, how do we as educators reach out to families to learn from them?
00:13:17
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to collaborate with them and to really start to change that narrative of we really do want you to be um collaborative equal partners in this work and that requires a lot of work on the part of schools to shift mindset around what does partnership look like, how do we set up um partnerships that do feel equal, that do feel truly collaborative, where there's like mutual learning. But I know I get i learned so much from my my students' families about how better to support them. And I also get to share all of the the joys and the the wonderful things they're doing well. I mean, how many high schoolers come home from school and like you ask them, like how was your day? And you get maybe a one or two word answer.
00:14:05
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um And so it's it's powerful just even on the positive to be able to share some of the work that our students are doing in class. And then when there are more challenging um things that arise to best support their ah their children,
00:14:21
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It's so important to me to be able to reach out to them to go, you know, your daughter is is struggling with this. And I just would love to learn from you how to better support her. So there it does look really different than it does with maybe littles. But I consider the families of my students most important partners in this work.
00:14:41
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Thank you for sharing that. I'm i'm a mom of an almost 17 year old and I get, you know, how was your day? Fine. So it was that's that's really nice to know um that just way the ways that you can reach out to families and and get to learn more about the people that they're living with or the people that they used to live with and and what influences their lives. yeah And I think jumping to on that, like,
00:15:06
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I think there's I mean there's a lot of mindset work that needs to happen and a lot of support for teachers and how to do this like a lot of teachers aren't trained on how to do collaborative family engagement and I think a lot of family engagement historically in some present is focused on schools telling parents um so it's very one way of like here are the rules here are the regulations here's what we need from you um Versus like how do we actually build a collaborative like colleague like relationship that we might see with another teacher in our school and that's really what I'd like us to shift to of like, these are your colleagues, they just aren't next to you in the other classroom.
00:15:43
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um and that like you have a lot to learn from them so we start out um in in our book we talk about this but also when i start out the year reaching out to families it's always about how can i learn from you what are your hopes and dreams for your young person um but it really like i i need to learn from you to be able to best support them in the classroom um Yeah. Well, absolutely. Yes. It's a partnership exactly as the title of the book is. It's a partnership. So my next question is about, it's really for educators. What advice would you have for an educator who wants to create a more letter centered
Creating Learner-Centered Spaces: Guidance and Expectations
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space? And the way you're describing this wonderful environment that you've got so many books, you've got the flags,
00:16:31
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You've got the calming corner. um you know beyond Beyond those things and the the resources that that are in your classroom, where could a teacher just get started with making a more learner-centered environment?
00:16:44
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Yeah, I mean, so one thing that really struck me when I was researching my most recent book, Making Americans, is just how many innovative ideas and creative teachers there are out there, but how often we don't know about each other's work. um So there's a a really extraordinary program that ah was 15 minutes away from me in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
00:17:10
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15 minutes away and I knew nothing about it until I started researching my book and I just think back to my younger teacher self going I could have learned so much about how in this particular school does really powerful family engagement work with immigrant families like how much better my practice could have been if I had known about this work having 15 minutes away. So I think one is reaching out to the folks around you because there are just really innovative creative educators and programs like right in our backyards. And of course there are many like farther afield as well.
00:17:48
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um But we have so much to learn from each other, and I think teaching often feels really isolating, um that we're alone in our classroom. Schools aren't always set up to create that time for educators to learn from each other. And so how do we push back on that? to To be able to sit in someone else's classroom, or to virtually sit in someone's classroom to be able to learn from them. I know that when I was traveling across the country for Making Americans, my book,
00:18:14
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I was taking all these notes for the book and the research, but then I also started creating this other list of I want to try that in my classroom. Oh, I want to bring that idea back or like, oh, this would be great for my curriculum. And then I really saw the transformation.
00:18:29
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in my classroom and my curriculum based on what I had learned from across the country. So that com corner with the huge tree and all the herbs that my students can smell and recognize from their home countries, that comes from a really extraordinary school in Texas, in Houston, Texas called Las Americas, that's for newcomers new to the country less than a year. And it was seeing that um and that trauma-sensitive garden that they had created outside between the buildings of their classroom that both led me to want to really explore them and describe it in my book, but also bring that back to my classroom in a way. um And that really helped to make the classroom a more learner-centered space. So I think
00:19:14
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the the big key piece of advice that I would tell other educators is as much as possible seeking out others seeing what innovative work is happening and then two of just like how can we be tackling maybe assumptions or old ways of how schools might be set up and like challenging them so for example the family engagement that we talked about of schools having a particular way of thinking about family engagement historically, how do we upend that and think about it to really center those collaborative relationships? How do we we think about um particular students and how to best support them? So I'm thinking about there's a school in Georgia and Decatur, Georgia called the Global Village Project. And this is a school for refugee girls who spent a long time at a school, maybe have never had a chance at academic formal schooling.
00:20:07
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And for most girls um who maybe arrive at 16 who've never had that chance of academic formal schooling, they're going to be put ah across the country. They're going to be put in maybe 10th or 11th grade. Good luck.
00:20:22
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And that's not a winning strategy. And what this particular school has done is recognize this this particular group of young people are really not being served by our schools. And so thought really creatively about how best to support them and structured a really nimble, very student this like-centered approach um of a three-year curriculum that is tailored to each kiddo as they grow and learn And if they grow and learn faster, then it jumps with them. And it brings in 100 volunteers every week to support these young women's learning and growth, and just has all these different strategies and approaches to really center ah all of learning around this particular group of kiddos who is often not well-served by schools.
00:21:15
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And so there's some phenomenal examples of schools and educators of thinking just differently about either curriculum or about how best to support particular students. um And so I think it's at the end, though, looking at those around us and trying to learn from those around us.
00:21:36
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Absolutely. And I think you're right. Like I, I used to, um, I used to go on Twitter a lot back before it got a little strange. Um, I found such a community, I hope it returns to being what it was, but I found such a community of great ideas and it's such a free, quick resource. Um, and so the internet really you know is helpful for following the educators. Um, that really makes the world a lot smaller when, when you're able to find this those, those.
00:22:05
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like-minded folks who are creative and and share what they're doing in the classroom. true I think another thing too would be making sure that we always have like really high expectations for our students. and I think that naturally leads to a more learner-centered spaces and learners and classrooms and curriculum. um I think about my kiddos and sort of older terminology that was used for immigrant origin students, say like yeah ESL, English as a Second Language.
00:22:35
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um I think when I hear that of my student Robert, my former student Robert, where it's not yeah ESL, English as a second language, it would be ETL, English as a 10th language.
00:22:47
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And I think it's just remarkable, but that English is a second language or even English language learners really puts the the emphasis on the deficit of what our students don't have versus all those strengths, those assets they have. And when we focus on the deficit or even when we define students by their deficit, it can be harder to miss all of the strengths that they have.
00:23:12
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And then it can be maybe a little bit harder to set like really like strong high expectations for what they can achieve and what's possible for them. And so, I mean, I see this in my travels and the work I did. I think there's there's this phenomenal just really striking quote from when I was traveling where this district in North Carolina, Guilford County in North Carolina, totally rethought literacy um to have high expectations for their immigrant learners. And um I was visiting a ninth grade class of newcomers and they were examining the following sentence.
00:23:52
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Quote, on an autumn night in 1607, a furtive group of men, women and children set off in a relay of small boats from the English village of Scrooby in pursuit of the immigrant's oldest dream, a fresh start in another country. And they're like pulling the sentence apart, and they're trying to understand different words, and they're like ah having all sorts of really interesting discussions about this sentence. And one of the educators leaned over to me and said, if you'd come to this classroom three years earlier, you would have had You've seen students examining something like the following sentence, quote, chimpanzees are eating bananas, the bananas are yellow.
00:24:29
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And just wildly different expectations of what our kids are capable of. And when we set the expectations really high and then support students in achieving that work, um I think we're making more learned-centered classrooms because we're honoring our students' knowledge. We're honoring our students' skill. And then we we shift to also What are the the types of things our students are able to achieve? So how can we bring that learning out of just the classroom into the halls of our school, into the communities of our school, and maybe also into the communities beyond the school walls? And so ah a lot of what I said, too, a lot of the work I try to do is to to bring our learning. We publish books in my class. We do action civics projects where we're interacting with
00:25:16
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organizations in our community but bring that outside and that again is that setting high expectations for our students and then centering their strengths and what they want to to learn and to study and to care about is really essential for the work of our classroom.
00:25:34
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Thank you for sharing that. Yes, i I definitely agree. And I have to ask before we wrap up here, can you tell us about your book Driving Backwards?
Inspiration Behind 'Driving Backwards'
00:25:43
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Oh, yeah. um So that was um that is my first book. And it is about small town, small town America. It's based on a ah little town in New England in New Hampshire. It's nonfiction.
00:25:59
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um that this town, Germantown, was briefly the most famous town in America. It was home to a writer named Grace Metallius, who wrote a book called Paid in Place, published in the 50s, which at the time when it was published became um sort of as famous, think as famous as like Harry Potter for its day, but as scandalous as Fifty Shades of Grey.
00:26:24
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So people were like either reading it or actively not reading it. um But it was talked about all across the country. And so for this brief moment in time, it was the most famous town in America, famous small town America, but today it's just every town America. It's a small farming town.
00:26:46
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Filled with extraordinary ordinary people um that ah people who might at first glance think none of these are just ordinary folks ordinary farmers but when you you listen to them you stop and listen and learn from them of their stories.
00:27:01
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and their work, they really are extraordinary. And so it was a a nonfiction book, Portraiting the Town, talking a little bit about the this famous ah story of Grace Metallus, also it's home to America's first serial killer, but really focusing on these these ordinary folks who are truly extraordinary. And the the title of the book, I'm not gonna give it away, but comes from a story shared with me by a 99-year-old man, David Bickford, who was um just an ah extraordinary storyteller and had lived in the town almost his entire life and had been in service to the town, either as a fireman or a selectman or a whole range of other responsibilities in the town, if you'd add and summed all of those different responsibilities, came up to about like 154 years of service to this town.
00:27:58
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Um, and he had this extraordinary memory. And so the, the story of the title driving backwards comes from his lived experience. Um, but a very different book than my last two on education, but, uh, a beautiful book that I enjoyed writing. Um, so I think it's beautiful. I hope others do too, but, um, quite intriguing and it shows your, it shows your range.
Jessica's Online Presence and Closing Remarks
00:28:22
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my And before before we close out here, where could our listeners find you online? Absolutely. So um easiest is my website, JessicaLander.com. um And then I'm also on Instagram at JessicaLander9, LinkedIn. And then of course, I hope folks will check out my latest book, Making Americans.
00:28:43
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We will put a link to all of those social media sites and to your book. And we hope that our listeners check it out. So Jessica, this has been a real treat. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's wonderful to chat with you.
00:28:57
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We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. If you'd like any additional information from the show, check out the show notes. Learn more about Mastery Portfolio and how we support schools at masteryportfolio dot.com. You can follow us on X at MasteryForAll and LinkedIn in our Mastery Portfolio page.
00:29:20
Speaker
We'd love for you to engage with us. If you'd like to be a guest in the show or know someone who would be an inspiring guest, please fill out the survey found in the show notes. And we'd love your feedback. Please write a review on your favorite podcasting app.