Last year, I wrote about Pedagogy of Voice, as described in Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation. This weekend I am rereading the Pedagogy of Voice chapter: Redefine “Success” and striving to go deeper into the content. In this post, I want to share some of the passages that are standing out the most, and why.
Learning Partnerships
Speak Up to Call In
One of my school’s goals this year is to engage in Strategic Listening and to lean into Courageous Conversations. We know that the language we use has an impact on students, colleagues, and families. The language we use also reflects our beliefs, and by being intentional on our language choices, we can increase our own self-awareness and shift beliefs. As educators, we must strive to examine our language and beliefs. We must also support each other in this work to help us see our blind spots and to grow as social justice educators; and that happens through conversation. In this post, I want to highlight some ideas from Teaching Tolerance’s Speak Up Guide, in order to synthesize the guide and to share this important resource with others.
“Every moment that bias goes unanswered
is a moment that allows its roots to grow deeper and stronger.
Bias left unanswered is bias tacitly approved.
If you don’t speak up, you are saying, in your silence,
that you condone it.” – Speak Up Guide
The Importance of Effective Classroom Talk
The productive hum of students engaged in talking and learning is like hearing a symphony, a favorite song. They are evidence of a teacher intentionally planning for and developing the expectations and strategies of effective talk with their students.
“Children’s speaking and listening lead the way for their reading and writing skills, and together these language skills are the primary tools of the mind for all future learning.” – Roskos, Tabors, & Lenhart, 2009
Increased effective discourse between students leads to deeper learning.
“According to John Hattie (2018), teachers can ask between 200 and 300 questions a day – whereas students typically ask clarification questions. Research also indicates that teachers should limit their speaking to 20-30% of the class time and the student talk time should be around 80%.” – Greenwood
According to Hattie’s meta-analysis, classroom discussion has an effect size of .82 which is more than twice the average growth in a year! When students talk together, their relationships strengthen, their oral language skills grow, they see each other’s strengths and feel an increasing sense of belonging, and engagement increases! Today I want to bring together some rich resources on classroom discourse, to support the ways that teachers scaffold increasingly complex student talk in their classrooms.
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The Four Pivots, Part One
The purpose of my writing this blog over time is to synthesize my own learning and to share my learning with others. As I write today, I’m returning to my purpose because I know how important it is to remind myself of my why, especially since today is the day I’ve added a “Subscription” feature to my webpage! I’m extremely excited about the privilege and opportunity to share my writing in a more systematic way with my readers.
In this post, I want to begin a synthesis of The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves, by Shawn Ginwright, PhD. This will be the first in a four part series, each part comprising one of Ginwright’s pivots. As I read the book, I was inspired by the connection between self work and social justice work. The focus on Belonging also stood out to me because it is one of my Core Values and because we know that in order for learning and healing to occur, we need Belonging. Reading the book, I had many take-aways for myself, my leadership moves, and my teaching. I highly recommend reading the text and know many educational leaders and learners will be embracing it over the years to come!
Joy: I’m a Published Author!
I’ve been writing this blog for two years! Writing is one of the ways I show my creativity and honor my core value of sharing what I have learned with others. One of my dreams has been to be a published author, and that dream came true last week when my first article was published on Edutopia. Today I am celebrating this goal, and looking forward to my upcoming writing projects.
Please check out my article:
Fostering Identity, Joy, and Skill Development
My Love of Writing
“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.”
–Sylvia Plath
Writing gives me Joy and teaching writing is one of my favorite parts of being an educator. So yesterday when my first article was published on Edutopia I was ecstatic; this has been one of my Bucket List items forever and especially since I started writing this, my own blog. The article is Fostering Identity, Joy, and Skill DevelopmentThe most amazing part of being published was the sense of community around me, both colleagues and students, who celebrated my accomplishment. It meant the world for me to go into a second grade class yesterday afternoon and show them my final writing as they were working on their own final edits and revisions. Naturally, this morning I woke up wanting to write about writing! In this post I want to list some of the strategies I’ve used in the teaching of writing to empower our youngest writers!
Going Deeper: Focus Students
In my last post, I wrote about how to listen to Focus Students to reflect on and improve teaching practices. Who is better to inform teaching than the achievers in front of us, especially the quieter students and students from formerly marginalized groups? This weekend I started reading Liz Kleinrock’s Start Here, Start Now after a colleague recommended the text. I am already seeing many connections to the Focus Student process. I know there is much much more to the text, however, in this post I will briefly address connections to the Focus Student process.
Focus Students and Process Observers
In previous posts I have written about the importance of having Process Observers to provide feedback on meeting processes. In addition, I have written about improving one’s practice by observing and listening to ideas from a Focus Student. In this post, I want to consider how using the Process Observer ideas around language, tone-of-voice, and body language can support deeper learning from (and in service to) Focus Students.
A Framework for Developing Agency
Last week a group of colleagues and I were asked to write our definition of transformational coaching. Some words and phrases that came up include: genius, joy, impact, empower, authenticity and relevance, learners feeling seen and heard, reflection, belief that students can be successful, and ways of being. Later in the week, when a Leadership Team at my school further explored the Agency Framework discussed in Street Data, I was primed to see the tool in a new way.
“If we believe that every student is… a complex, layered human with endless potential, brilliance, and access to community cultural wealth-we can choose a pedagogy of voice that transforms everything from our classrooms to our adult cultures to our policies.” – Safir and Dugan in Street Data
In this post I want to summarize what Safir and Dugan say about the Agency Framework and share some ways in which it can be enacted in an elementary school.
Ten Lessons from a Master Teacher and Mentor
During my first year teaching in the classroom, I was fortunate to have a teacher on my team who mentored me. We didn’t have a formal mentoring program at the time so she did this out of the goodness of her heart. This leader, who grew quickly to become a dear friend, died last week. Not surprisingly, the church was full at her funeral, including former colleagues and students. Her impact and legacy are huge. In this post I want to share ten lessons I learned from this amazing educator.
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