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00:00:01
Stephanie Dinnen and Peter Siner ask teachers what they need
11 Plays49 minutes ago
https://www.teachsmarteredu.com/
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Stephanie's LinkedIn
Peter's LinkedIn
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Contact us: Starr@masteryportfolio.com crystal@masteryportfolio.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
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.
00:00:14
Speaker
In each episode, we bring you an authentic conversation with educators, both in and out of the classroom that will hopefully encourage you to try something new. 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.
00:00:34
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The learner centered spaces podcast is a member of the teach better podcast network. Get ready to be inspired as we dive right into the conversation with today's guest.
00:00:48
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We have
Meet the Guests: Peter Seiner and Stephanie Denon
00:00:49
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a special treat today. We have two guests today. First is Peter Seiner. He is an educational consultant, Google innovator, and host of the Teach Smarter podcast.
00:01:00
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He specializes in professional learning that blends AI integration, practical tech tools, and intentional and instructional design to help educators streamline their work and stay focused on what matters most.
00:01:12
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Peter has worked with schools and districts across the country delivering training sessions on curriculum implementation, instructional coaching, and leadership development. His work centers on helping educators create sustainable, purpose-driven systems that enhance both student learning and teacher well-being.
00:01:32
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He helps educators streamline their work and improve instruction by designing professional learning that's practical, efficient, and aligned to what actually matters. He is a frequent national presenter for ISTE, FETC, MATSOL, CMTC, Google Innovator, and co-lead for several ride-endorsed courses, including SEL and STEM.
00:01:58
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Outside of education, he is a musician and a performer. He regularly performs acoustic sets at events and venues in Southern New England. We also have Stephanie Denon with us today.
00:02:10
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She is a literacy and dyslexia specialist and systems coach focusing on the implementation and adaptation of high-quality curriculum materials and high-leverage professional development across academic, social, and behavioral multi-tiered systems of support.
00:02:28
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She's worked with schools and districts nationally and abroad to support sustained, evidence-informed adoption, installation, and implementation efforts. She helps districts, school leaders, and educators move beyond installation and into fully integrated implementation with evidence-informed adaptations for core content and social-emotional learning.
00:02:52
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She is the lead content developer and instructor for the Rhode Island Social Emotional Learning Specialist Endorsement course and is a regular contributor to the academic literature on literacy, dyslexia, and curriculum and implementation.
00:03:06
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As a fun fact, she is a career switcher. Before becoming an educator, she was a research coordinator studying the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based interventions in psychiatric care.
00:03:19
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We are so excited to have Peter and Stephanie on our show today. Welcome. Welcome to you both. So we like to start our show asking you to tell us about a defining moment in your education journey or something that you're working on right now that really matters to you.
00:03:37
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and That's a fun one. Pete, you want to take it first?
Peter's Journey with Teacher Engagement
00:03:40
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Great to be here. This is a really good question. i think it's one that actually does inform some of my approach now. um When I first started, i was relatively new out of the classroom. So when I first started in professional learning and um looking back, I realized how naive I was and how you know soon I dis dismissed the so-called disengaged teachers who'd like push back on every initiative. And what I realized was that over time, most of them actually weren't cynical and they were basing that off of their experience and
00:04:12
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Just seeing all of the new shiny things come and go, um I realized shortly that they were actually 100% correct. And many of the things that I was supporting as the end-all be-all have since gone.
00:04:26
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And so I think that shaped my approach now because I i stopped rooting... my work in specific tools or trends or curriculums. And i I think I've really tried to put more of an emphasis on the best practices, like the long lasting transferable practices that actually stick around.
00:04:45
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And so some of my work now around AI, I think is reminiscent of when I first started and realizing, okay, There's going to be a lot of people who promise AI is going to solve all of their problems. but How do we actually prepare teachers to use AI effectively so that no matter what the label is or the company name, that they're still equipped to actually do the job and and do it efficiently?
00:05:10
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And i I think similarly, i have always been really interested in the intersection of teaching as both art and science. And sometimes those two ideas feel really in conflict with each other. And and a personal experience that was really a defining moment for me was early in my elementary teaching career.
00:05:34
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So
Stephanie's Shift in Teaching Focus
00:05:35
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when I was first really being tasked with teaching literacy at a very, very foundational level, i had an interaction with a parent that just completely changed my trajectory as an educator, where and the efforts that I was focusing on, i was very focused at the time in the art of teaching. I had a beautiful classroom. It was very Pinterest worthy.
00:05:57
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and And I had been sharing that with this with this parent, all of these, look at the walls, look at the culture, all of these good, important things. And the this parent looked me dead in the eye, just like read me dead to rights and said, that's all well and good, Miss Dinnin, but my son can't read.
00:06:20
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And for me, it made me really go back and and understand the science of teaching. I had the art. I lacked the science. And so that is kind of how I've spent the past 10 years of my education journey is really trying to understand the science of learning and marry it with the art of teaching so that it doesn't feel like these two things are fundamentally in conflict with each other.
00:06:49
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I think those are both really awesome, like origin moments because ah first of all very relatable. i too, when I first moved into the like professional learning realm,
00:07:02
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kind of it's easy to say I could do it better because I know what I don't like when I'm sitting in professional learning and I know what I want to do. And I had a principal also who was very into shiny things. And so, you know, we kind of changed with the wind. And I think it's super important that Teachers understand the why of the learning that's happening the same as, you know, making sure that the kids understand the why.
Making Professional Development Practical
00:07:29
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So with with that in mind, with the work that both of you do right now, how do you make sure that what you are sharing with them is stuff that they could use right away and is useful to developing these learner centered spaces that promote the things that you're that you're speaking about?
00:07:53
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i I think some of it just comes down to listening to the people who are actually you know supporting to making these learning experiences for. I remember being in a debrief after a walkthrough. This is last year. And everyone's going, ready we have like leaders and there were a couple of principals and instructional coaches and content leads. and Everyone's going around the table trying to figure out why it is that the group of teachers we had just observed, to why they weren't implementing the curriculum. and ah It felt odd because here we are trying to figure out why they're not doing something where we could just literally go and ask them. i mean They're down the hall. and
00:08:34
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So I think some of it comes down to just actually listening to people and and the people who are sitting in front of you. I mean, a lot of the things that we deem as best practice in the classroom are things we don't even hold ourselves to in professional development or ah supporting teachers. And so, again, I just think listening to people, what they actually need, figuring out the the core of you know the problems that they're facing instead of trying to assume and then so you know solve problems that we're basing off of the assumptions we've made.
00:09:06
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Pete is so right there. and Something I say all the time in my professional learning sessions, in my one-to-one coaching, in my work with administrators is that we are here making a good thing even better.
00:09:20
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i feel like so much of the professional learning and the public conversation around teaching comes from a very negative deficit place. Again, just like Pete said,
00:09:32
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in complete contradiction to what the best practices are that we would hold for students, right, which is a strengths-based mindset starting with an asset-based approach. We never seem to apply that to ourselves or to our colleagues.
00:09:46
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and And I think if if that is the way that you come into the conversation, that There is already good here and what we're going to do is leverage best practice leverage this curriculum leverage this.
00:10:01
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Ed tech tool to just make it even better to amplify the goodness buy in as much, much higher than if you start from a well here's our terrible test scores and and clearly everything going wrong.
00:10:17
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My question for you is, you know, a lot of what we do as educators is work with children in a classroom, and we want to make that learner-centered. Does that differ when you're working with adults in professional development? How is that the same? How is that different for adults and children?
00:10:40
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That's such a good one. um i will say i have land more on the less on the side of guide on the side, whether I'm teaching a classroom full of children or I'm facilitating a room full of adults.
00:10:55
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And a little closer to the sage on the stage sort of thing. I think it is comforting for both adults and children to feel like the person that they are being asked to follow actually knows a thing or two about what they are saying.
00:11:13
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So for me, the the approach is similar in terms of I want both my students and the adults who I'm asking to invest their very, very precious time and resources and trust in me ah to have that confidence in in my leadership, in my expertise, and in my readiness to support them.
00:11:40
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So I'm thinking from an administrator lens here. i have been a teacher for many years. I've been an administrator for much less years.
Tailoring Professional Development to Teachers' Needs
00:11:49
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And there is still resistance from some educators for professional development.
00:11:54
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This is a waste of time. This could have been an email. You know, what advice would you give an administrator who's really trying to support educators in what they want to learn, what they need at the moment.
00:12:07
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Because sometimes I feel like we're just lost in like what to recommend to somebody.
00:12:13
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i mean, I think some of this comes back to one of my previous answers, which is just trying to really listen to, um Listen to your teachers, listen to your staff. and And again, like applying what we know is best practice in the classroom.
00:12:29
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So there's never going to be a time when you have a full staff professional development where everyone's getting exactly what they need, unless we're finding ways to kind of differentiate or tear out how we're supporting them during that ah PD. So I would say um the resistance often comes from a place of...
00:12:47
Speaker
Maybe, you know, obviously there are some people who are resistant in general or who are uncomfortable with the curriculum, ah sorry, the, um you know, the focus of the professional development or maybe aren't ready to admit that they, it's it's a skill they haven't developed yet and they're too far into teaching to admit it to anyone. I know those people exist, but I also think lots of the pushback comes around sitting through a PD where the content isn't very relevant. It's not necessarily personalized enough to matter all that much to you.
00:13:18
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um Maybe you're being pulled out of your classroom for the seventh time that week. And so I think if we can find ways to really make sure that the support we're providing teachers is based on what they actually need. And you can do that easily by visiting classrooms, surveying teachers you know during your walkthroughs, actually making sure that you're following up with things that are relevant to that teacher.
00:13:39
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um Because you know if i if I do a ah ah learning walk and I go into 20 classrooms and 10 of them you know show signs that the teacher is struggling to either implement the curriculum or classroom management, whatever it is, that other 10 who's doing it well is going to sit through one of my PDs and and have no clue why you know this is the topic of the day. So think it's all a long-winded way of saying ask people what they need and try to make sure the supports are relevant to them to what they're actually um you know needing to develop.
00:14:11
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I really appreciate that you said that, Pete. As a teacher who was often ahead of a lot of my colleagues in a lot of spaces, I found that they really did shoot to the middle and didn't really differentiate for those of us who were taking the time on our own to do a lot of learning. And it was definitely, i wouldn't call it a resentment, but it was definitely like, a it would be so awesome to be utilized Personally, as well, since other school districts were actually already asking me to come to their schools and help them with a lot of the stuff that I was doing in school that nothing was being used in my own school, except in my own classroom.
00:14:55
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How do you build a culture from what you see? Like, um for example... Peter, I really appreciate you talking about how the PD needs to be differentiated.
00:15:10
Speaker
Can you talk about how how you would go about getting teachers ready for some of these really important learning walk situations if the culture in the school that you go into has not yet supported such a thing?
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think part of it is making sure that as an administrator or, you know, district lead, whatever whatever your role is, that you're doing these walks for the right reasons, that it's truly intended to support teachers and, you know, ah lift instruction and um obviously support students.
00:15:45
Speaker
And I think when learning walks are implemented, um for the for the purpose of being a gotcha moment, I think it's it's almost impossible to you know put the toothpaste back in the tube. And so i think oftentimes, you know we kind of go about our feedback in an indirect way because we want to make sure that we're maintaining a positive culture. So you know if you see people not implementing a curriculum or if they're you the law the laundry list of things,
00:16:16
Speaker
um I think when you try to use a learning walk as a way to fix that, all you're really doing is putting the people who are doing it on the spot and and having them feel like they're doing something wrong when they're not.
00:16:28
Speaker
And then having the people who are kind of somewhere in the middle feel like they're not getting supported. They're just kind of... getting reprimanded. And then the people who aren't doing it oftentimes so aren't really the ones who are listening during those sessions anyways.
00:16:39
Speaker
um So I think it comes from a place again of like making sure that you're doing this for the right reasons, making sure you actually have a goal at the end of it um and making sure that you're not starting these with a gotcha. They have to start positive. They have to start with building people up and not just telling them what they're doing wrong.
00:16:58
Speaker
And if I can jump in there for a second, I think and and geek out just a moment. This is where having a small knowledge of change management and implementation science as ah school leader, as an instructional coach, whatever leadership capacity you're in can be incredibly impactful. and Not everyone adopts a new initiative or a new education intervention in the same way.
00:17:24
Speaker
Right. We know that there are broadly five types of adopters. There are your innovators. Those are probably all four of us on this call. Right. People who are always the first to pick up the new shiny toy and try it out in their classroom.
00:17:39
Speaker
You have your early adopters who will follow shortly behind your innovators. And then you have your majorities. which are your early majority, your late majority, and your laggards, in the same way, or what we might say more charitably, your resistors.
00:17:55
Speaker
And are our problem is, again, we don't apply the same practices of instruction to adult education, which is we go with universal one-size-fits-all PD, exactly as Pete described. And in reality, each of these adopters has a different profile and a different way in which they need to be recruited, spoken to engage, different values for what triggers for them, okay, it's time for me to invest in in this initiative now.
00:18:24
Speaker
And if we don't parse apart our training and our support to meet those specific profiles, then and we miss the majority, right? We're always only speaking to one group and leaving everyone else out of it, which just further entrenches their resistance or apprehension.
00:18:43
Speaker
I understand how challenging it is. It's, you know, like you said earlier, it's easy to kind of sit from the outside and say, man, that'd be so easy. Tear out the instruction, make sure everyone gets what they need. you know, make sure the supports are relevant, but at the same time as a ah school leader, I mean, you're in the school every day. Those are your colleagues. And, yeah um, the last thing you want to do is be little people. And I think it's, it is, it can be challenging to tear out support for your teachers without them realizing yeah or without making it feel like, you know, you're, you're separating people based on ability and, um,
00:19:18
Speaker
I think it can be really challenging to do it effectively. And so oftentimes it kind of either gets put on the back burner or and in the name of efficiency and moving ahead, the time that's needed to actually do it in a high quality way is not really allocated for it.
00:19:37
Speaker
I love that you mentioned that because i've I've worked for administrators who do the gotcha walkthroughs and will offer critique and negative feedback before they've even established a relationship or have built up you know their their confidence in you or expressed that to you. And it's really difficult to work with a person like that. So thank you for saying that.
Impactful Educators in Peter and Stephanie's Careers
00:20:00
Speaker
To wrap up, tell us some people who have helped you over the course of your career? Anybody you want to give a shout out Okay, for me, hands down, it's always it's always the same answer.
00:20:13
Speaker
i tell everybody that the person who taught me how to be a teacher was my very first paraprofessional, Ms. Lina Vazaga, a now 24-year educator in at the greater DC area. And everything learned ever learned about how to actually be a teacher that I learned from her.
00:20:36
Speaker
I'm going to give two shout outs. I hope that's OK. The first one is um to a teacher that I worked with my first year, ah my first few years. His name was John Wolf. he um He taught, ah you know, I think everyone has different ways of influencing the way you're a teacher. And one of the things he taught me was just to have a sense of humility and not take yourself so seriously. And the way he would interact with some like pretty like challenging moments and students who were, you know, ah not exactly behaving the best way. He always took it with such grace and and like a sense of humor that he knew he was exuding, but like wasn't always obvious to the students.
00:21:18
Speaker
it's hard to It's hard to convey without seeing it, but he's someone I've always looked up to as as far as just having such a ah calm approach to teaching, even in the moments that make you want to rip your hair out.
00:21:29
Speaker
um And I would say currently ah ah my friend Nick, who is um a middle school teacher, we went to school together and we've kind of taken two different paths in education, but he's someone who has always really kept me grounded because he's in the classroom, he's still teaching, and he's evidence of someone who doesn't always jump on board right away, but being reflective, he shows that You know, you can find a balance and you can you can make sure that your students get exactly what they need while trying to integrate some of the new shiny things. But yeah, I would i would say, ah especially now, he's he's someone who always kind of keeps me grounded in this work and making sure that I'm focused on what I started this for.
00:22:14
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that. It's beautiful. And you too are such a rich resource of information for educators.
Connecting with the Guests
00:22:21
Speaker
So where could our listeners find you online to get in contact with you?
00:22:33
Speaker
yeah you can find us at teach smarter edu.com. We also co-host together the teach smarter podcast. We are pretty active on LinkedIn, less so on the other social. Some of them have gotten a little scary, but those are probably the two principal ways through or three principal ways, excuse me, through our website, teach smarter edu through our teach smarter podcast and on LinkedIn.com.
00:23:02
Speaker
Well, thank you so much. And I will say from personal experience, your podcast is wonderful and all of our listeners should go check it out. So thank you both for being on the show today, Stephanie and Peter. Thank you. This was great. yeah My pleasure.
00:23:17
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
Invitation to Engage with Mastery Portfolio
00:23:27
Speaker
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00:23:32
Speaker
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00:23:44
Speaker
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00:23:55
Speaker
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