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Lainie Rowell says gratitude is foundational
98 Plays2 years ago
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology, and went on to earn postgraduate degrees in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools.
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Transcript
Introduction to Learner Centered Spaces 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. 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. The learner-centered spaces podcast is now a member of the Teach Better Podcast Network.
Meet Laini Raul: Community Building & Social-Emotional Learning
00:00:40
Speaker
Laini Raul is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design.
00:00:57
Speaker
She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn postgraduate degrees in education. An international keynote speaker, Laney has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across four continents. As a consultant, Laney's client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Please welcome Laney to today's show.
00:01:22
Speaker
Good morning, Laney. We are so excited to have you with us today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What's your role, your location, a little bit about your journey and an interesting fact?
00:01:33
Speaker
Sure. Oh, wow. An interesting fact. Let me think of that. First of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here with both of you. Star, this is actually the first time we've ever chatted live. Am I wrong about that? No, I think you're right. I feel like I know you because we know each other on the socials, but those lines sometimes get blurred, so I'm really excited to talk to both of you.
00:01:56
Speaker
So I am an educator. I'm in my 26th year of being an educator. I've been a classroom teacher, a district leader, and I am now a full-time author, speaker, consultant, hodgepodge kind of, like just out there trying to support teachers in the amazing work that they do.
00:02:22
Speaker
And an interesting fact, I guess maybe that I was a psychology major. I was never intending to be an educator. It was actually that I was doing my field hours and I chose to be in a school, I'll be honest, because it was closest to campus and I thought it would be convenient and I just fell in love with being an educator and have just enjoyed every moment in our noble profession since.
00:02:51
Speaker
I could totally appreciate that, Laney. I also did not think I was going to be an educator when I went to school, which is so ironic looking back on it now, but I get it. I was going to be a writer and I took British and American literature and did not do my ed credits until I was already into my career and decided I wanted to go back to be an educator.
00:03:17
Speaker
And then you did both because you're not there too. I know. It's kind of crazy how that happened. You wake up one day and you're like, wow, I actually met my childhood dreams just about then. It's pretty cool.
What are Learner-Centered Spaces?
00:03:29
Speaker
So can you tell us a little bit about what a learner centered space looks like, feels like, sounds like to you and your experience or the experiences of the folks that you work with?
00:03:42
Speaker
Well, first of all, I just want to say I love the phrase learner-centered. And I believe it's an intentional choice to say learner instead of student because to me, student, it's a role in a hierarchy. But learner is all of us, right? We're all continuously improving.
00:04:03
Speaker
And there's a great Dylan Willem quote, if we create a culture where every teacher believes they need to improve, not because they're not good enough, but because they can be even better, there is no limit to what we can achieve. So to me, there's so much to a learner and center space.
Understanding the Community of Inquiry Framework
00:04:21
Speaker
but you feel it when you walk into it because it isn't just a teacher standing at the front of the room, and I know that's a very cliche example, but it really is this space where you sense that everyone in there is working towards a common goal, and they're there to support each other, and there's a sense of belonging, and you feel that when you're in the space. So, Star, if I can expand on that a little bit,
00:04:51
Speaker
Yes, please do. Yeah, so I have a kind of an interesting background in that I have not been just in brick or mortar schools for my career. I also have about 16 years experience in online learning.
00:05:05
Speaker
And a framework that I came across that has been really helpful to me is the community of inquiry framework. And it just helps guide me on how to strategically insert myself in a learning experience, whether I'm working with kids or adults. So I really want to make sure that everyone is flourishing academically, behaviorally, socially, emotionally. And so I love this framework because these three
00:05:34
Speaker
kind of realms in it, they overlap. There's all these interactions in between them that make these really beautiful experiences. And I know it's not great to do this on a podcast, so I'm going to try and be quite quick about this. But you've got this social presence where there's a sense of belonging and we're working together. We're communicating. These interpersonal relationships are thriving.
00:06:03
Speaker
But we're also really maintaining our individuality and what makes us special, what makes us unique. And then, so that's one, social presence. And then there's teacher presence and that's designing, facilitating, directing of the cognitive and the social. And I always tell people that's the one that
00:06:26
Speaker
is still much more than the average person on the street. If you said, what does a teacher do? They would start to maybe list some things while they teach, they plan, they facilitate, but they still wouldn't get all of the things that a teacher does on the day-to-day. It's so much stuff. And then there's the cognitive presence. And this is that ability for all the learners to construct meaning
00:06:50
Speaker
together to co-construct. And so I really feel like in a learner-centered space, you're going to see those elements. You're going to see the social presence, the teaching presence, the cognitive presence. And there's going to be all this beautiful overlap.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I mean, there's so many other things and I don't need to get into listing a bunch of frameworks, but I will add that, you know, gratitude is a very big thing for me. And to me, that's foundational. That's something that you're also going to, that's going to be just, you're going to feel that as soon as you come in. So teachers grateful to kids and all they bring. Teachers, obviously, gratitude to them from kids and adults, peers, families, all of that.
00:07:38
Speaker
Gratitude to me is something that is all-encompassing. But anyway, that's me talking a lot, so I'll pause.
00:07:46
Speaker
I love your book on gratitude. I love your podcast on gratitude. And I think because of you, Laney, there's always been gratitude in my classroom, but I'd never really paid attention to it until I learned about your work. And it's just thinking about the kids when they leave my class. I teach seventh graders and they're wild.
00:08:09
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You know loud but a lot of them at the end of class will say thank you And I've started responding to them with thank you for your hard work today Because they're not really doing something for me, but they're doing something for themselves and I'm grateful for that So I wanted to give a shout out even though it's in your bio I just wanted to give another shout out to your work about on gratitude and and how important that is to what we do as teachers and my work also on the side is working talking about parent communication and gratitude is just
00:08:40
Speaker
streaming right through all of that, right? There's so much gratitude with connecting with families and teachers. So thank you for that work. Speaking of students and parents, assessment, that's a huge word.
Assessment Techniques & Feedback in Education
00:08:54
Speaker
And it's a topic I know Star writes a lot about, and I would even call her an expert on that. And I want to know what assessment looks like because we have to have some sort of feedback. We have to have some sort of grade in some situations.
00:09:10
Speaker
to indicate to students and to families how they're doing, how they're progressing. So how would you describe assessment in a learner-centered space? Well, first of all, thank you, Crystal. Those were some very kind words, and I would concur. Star is definitely an expert on assessment. So a little intimidating talking about it with her, but I will just share that
00:09:32
Speaker
You know, I had a chance to work with, I was working with like 80 teachers yesterday and it was a virtual professional learning and I put them in breakout rooms and I got to jump in because when they're in breakout rooms, I'm always popping in and I always say, I'm a fly on the wall, just ignore me.
00:09:49
Speaker
But I really wanted to hear the conversation that they were having so that I could, based on that, really understand where they were coming from. This is a group I had never worked with before. I've spent 20 minutes with them, and I want to know what are they thinking about as far as how do we create learner-centered spaces?
What is Universal Design for Learning?
00:10:08
Speaker
What are they thinking about in honoring what is unique and dynamic about the individuals?
00:10:16
Speaker
I really think, and again, I always hesitate to throw out more frameworks, but I have been using universal design for learning as a mindset for design for as many years as I can remember. I worked for Apple for a number of years, and that was a huge part of the professional learning that I did for Apple because I would go out to schools and all the experience were universally designed, but also I would explicitly do workshops.
00:10:43
Speaker
on universally designing using technology. And one of the things I'll bow to another queen, Katie Novak, and I think she explains this idea really well of, you know, how can we give more voice and choice when it comes to assessment? And she talks about really looking at are the standards content standards or method standards?
00:11:07
Speaker
So for example, content standards will often start with something like explain or understand, communicate, summarize, compare and contrast. And those type of standards really leave
00:11:21
Speaker
Wide open, you can do so much with those, right? So that's when we can get into these are the different ways you can demonstrate what you know and you're able to do. You can create a TED Talk style. You could create a slide deck to show your understanding. You could create a video tutorial. So many different ways that you could go with that. Those are content standards.
00:11:42
Speaker
Now method standards really articulate specific outcomes like write, solve, graph, discuss. Now that doesn't mean we don't get choice in that.
00:11:55
Speaker
So even just to say, if the method standard starts with write, well, that could be handwrite or type. There's other ways that we can give voice and choice. The solve could be to do it traditionally on pen and paper. It could be to create a video tutorial. So we still have a lot of ways that we can really appreciate the unique and dynamic of our learners.
00:12:18
Speaker
being focused on them and what they bring to the table. It's that really asset-based approach. And again, that's where the gratitude comes in. I'm so grateful that I don't have learners that are all just one way. I want to see all that. And then actually leveraging that, and I use the video tutorials example a lot because to me, that's a really fun one where if the method standard is solve for blah, blah, blah, it gives the math,
00:12:45
Speaker
whatever it is. I won't even be good at coming up with one off the cuff, but I could say, all right, you can do this quiz.
00:12:54
Speaker
where you could create a video tutorial where you explain how to solve one of the problems. They're gonna go into such detail and such depth in that video tutorial that I will really get a rich understanding of what they know. And so I'm still giving them choice, but when they do the video tutorial, they actually create something that I get to use as a teaching asset for the other learners who might be struggling.
00:13:23
Speaker
And so I've been talking a lot. I'll pause there. Now it's all good. I love video tutorials and I got to, I am a math teacher and I got to experience a lot of that during
00:13:35
Speaker
pandemic when we were all remote and my assessment had to change dramatically and I had the students submit a video tutorial on a math concept of their choice and I'm embarrassed to say I haven't gone back to that project after the pandemic I was just so grateful to be back into a school building but you just reminded me I need to bring that old project back because they
00:13:59
Speaker
they really demonstrated how much they knew about the concept by communicating and teaching it to others. So my next question I have for you, Laney, is, so we have some educators who listen to the show who, their heart is in learner-centered education, but maybe they are physically located in a school that's a little more, air quote, traditional. What advice do you have for educators in that kind of situation, or maybe school leaders in that situation where they're trying to change the tide,
00:14:29
Speaker
in their school culture to be more learner-centered. Well, thank you for that, Crystal. I think we have a lot more autonomy than it might feel like. And I know that everyone's in a different situation. But I do think, even just the example I gave of the video tutorials, that's something that's within a teacher's
00:14:51
Speaker
realm of control. And so I'm not going against anything that's going to upset an administrator as long as I'm meeting what they have set are the firm goals for, we're going to need to do maybe this benchmark, or this is what's going to need to be in the grade book, or things like that. But I really think there are these small but profound moves that we can make that
00:15:15
Speaker
really have a huge, huge impact. And so I'll stay with that video tutorial example a little bit further and I appreciate you sharing and I'm sure Star has experience with that as well. And I'd love to hear that too because I'm always learning. When I do things that really empower learners,
00:15:40
Speaker
allow me to sometimes take a step back and learn from them. So even the video tutorials, when I'm listening to that, that's formative assessment. That's also me hearing it in a kid language that I wouldn't have thought to use that will resonate with the other learners. So what can I do? Okay, let's amplify that.
00:15:57
Speaker
So I'll put that in my Google Classroom or my Canvas if anyone's struggling with this concept. Hey, come back here and check this out. There are these small moves that we do that really honor learners that have just a huge impact. And like I said, they're not massive shifts. They're small, but they're profound. And so we can do these little things. And I encourage, and this is something that I do, and I encourage
00:16:25
Speaker
other educators to do is to really think about what is working well, what needs to be tweaked, and maybe what can we take off of our plate.
00:16:38
Speaker
I can reflect on my first years as an educator and there were definitely things that I would go, oh wow, I wasted a ton of time on that and I kept doing it for years. Why did I keep doing that? It's because I never pause to reflect and think about what I can take off the plate. Now this is not to dismiss the many, many things that are imposed upon teachers that they do not have control over, but I will say there were definitely things that I imposed on myself.
00:17:04
Speaker
that I now go, wow, I wish I had given myself permission to let that go and really focus on what matters, the kids and what they bring to the learning experience.
Fostering Student Ownership in Learning
00:17:14
Speaker
I don't know, Starr, do you want to add to that? Sure. A lot of what you're saying, Lene, jives with experiences I had. Going back to the tutorial, that was one of the first projects I really put into kids' hands exclusively, but then also utilized as a tool for other students in the future.
00:17:37
Speaker
From there, I had actually created a student generated tutorial library of different ways kids could interact with challenging poetic structures specifically. Because when people think about teaching English in 11th and 12th grade or AP English,
00:17:56
Speaker
they think that the teacher sometimes has to be the expert. And I really challenge that, that kids know a lot more than they really think. And I'm always in the position to kind of say, kind of like what Crystal was saying before, to be super appreciative of their hard work, of their perspective. And I think when you're teaching literature at a higher level, at some point kids are taught that
00:18:25
Speaker
There's a right way to read literature, which I do not believe at all. I believe the context that we bring to our learning experience colors the way we understand everything that we read. So being open to what kids and other learners have to think about the text that we engage with together.
00:18:47
Speaker
is always eye-opening and kids always see it. There could be texts that I've read dozens of times and have taught dozens of times.
00:18:56
Speaker
a particularly unique viewpoint will come up in class and I'll be blown away. And I'm certainly not afraid to say at this point in my career specifically, I have never thought of it that way.
Implementing Changes for Improved Engagement
00:19:12
Speaker
And I have read this book a lot and it doesn't make it any less right as long as
00:19:20
Speaker
You have some evidence from the text, I think, but that's just the way we approach it to give kids that kind of ownership. And the same thing with adult learners when you're working with them as well, because my career path has shifted like yours, Lainey, and I work with adults more than I work with kids now.
00:19:41
Speaker
getting them to take ownership of some of these practices where they are reflective and they are thoughtful about what they're doing and more importantly, why they're doing it. I think a lot of times, especially early career teachers, don't even question why they do things. I think they just do it because you're in kind of that automatic mode of trying to do all the things you think you're supposed to be doing instead of
00:20:08
Speaker
just focusing on what's most important, the people that are in front of us.
00:20:14
Speaker
I appreciate that. And right, there's like no other profession that you spent like all your formative years and you go into it. It's like you that's what you know, how would you how do you begin to rethink that? And so one other thing I would add, and by the way, I really love star you're giving this example of how you could have read a piece of literature so many times and then a teenager who has a different perspective says, Well, this is what I'm seeing and then can back it up. They've got like
00:20:43
Speaker
I got the receipts on why I think this is right. That's amazing. And then Crystal for you in math, there's just so many different ways that a teenager and even really, really young kids are going to articulate something that I may have known for most, if not, you know,
00:20:58
Speaker
since I was a wee little one. And I don't even know how to say it in a different way. And they do that. So this is like a very specific example of just taking a step back and being like, how can I actually take something off of my plate? I'll be honest, I do not get joy from making video tutorials. It's no, no, thank you. I'm perfectly happy to pass that on to a child who would find some joy in that.
00:21:26
Speaker
and empower them and give them an opportunity to share their perspective and use that kid language to hopefully reach someone that I would not be able to reach. But really, I think it's these small moves over time that really make a huge difference. And so one of the things, I'll go back to the group that I was working with yesterday, they were just starting to feel overwhelmed when I'm starting to talk about giving more voice and choice to learners. And they're like,
00:21:56
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I like.
00:21:59
Speaker
This example of a choice board has like nine choices on it. And I said, why do you feel like you have to start with nine choices? If you could add one more choice, wouldn't that potentially make a better experience for learners in the room? Just add one more, that's all you need. And then if you need more options, why is it your job to think of it? If you tell kids, this is what we need to be able to know and do by the end of this, what are some ways that you could prove to me that you have this?
00:22:28
Speaker
And let them give some suggestions. And then I'll just say, having a background in really, like I said, I worked with Apple. And I always think the teacher does not need to be the tech expert. I would just say, who in the room is really good with Google Slides?
00:22:45
Speaker
Great. Julio, Samantha, you're my Google Slides experts. When someone has a question about Google Slides, they're going to come to you and please go to them first because they know better than I do. And so it's not always easy to take that step back from being the I know everything, but man, is it
00:23:05
Speaker
Is it really liberating? And you get to enjoy being a teacher instead of having all of that stress. And not to say that it's perfect all the time, but just throwing it out there is something that's worked well for me.
The Role of Productive Struggle in Learning
00:23:17
Speaker
I will insert here, there's an article. This is for my math people listening. There's an article by Steve Reinhardt. It's an older article, but it's still relevant called Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say.
00:23:30
Speaker
I actually have this printed out and I posted up on my bulletin board and I read it every August before school starts. And it's just a nice reminder that we need to let the kids do some of the talking. Reinhard is speaking in his article more about math, but I think a lot of that could be taken into other subjects as well. So if you're listening, check out that article for sure.
00:23:54
Speaker
And I will say as a parent and a teacher, this is something that I always have to remind myself to just take a step back, let there be the productive struggle. Don't rescue all the time. It is not easy, but it is very rewarding when I do it. So Laney, are there any educators or influencers out there that you would like to give a shout out to who have influenced your work?
00:24:24
Speaker
quite honestly, both of you, obviously. And this is going to sound like a cheat, but I really want to give a shout out to all the contributors for Evolving with Gratitude. The stories that they share are all about being learner-centered. They're about
00:24:46
Speaker
really cultivating the best in these humans so they thrive and flourish and it's kids and adults. And so I'm really grateful. I ran into someone recently who said that they keep that book by their bedside because they want to reread the stories from the contributors.
00:25:06
Speaker
And I'm like, Oh, thank you. No, I'm just kidding. I'm totally happy that they want to read the, reread the stories from the contributors. I like what I wrote too, but it's fine. Whatever. Um, but, but I'm just trying to set the stage because what these contributors shared is so beautiful. And I really think it brings us back to, you know, this is why we're here. We want to really help everyone in our learning community, kids and adults thrive and flourish.
00:25:35
Speaker
Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you for your time today. I think that so much of what you said will influence educators and school leaders to head toward a more learner centered space. And we very much appreciate all of your insight. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. 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.
00:26:05
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.