The Good Life

Speaker 1 Greetings, and welcome to the first episode of season three of Things Fall Apart, our podcast here at Human Restoration Project. My name is Chris McNutt. I'm a high school social studies instructor who believes adamantly in instilling progressive values of education, putting humans at the center rather than ranking, filing, and demeaning students. In this podcast, we're talking about the good life. What is it exactly that we want students to have in their future? Is it a great career, a content lifestyle, a family, solidarity, freedom, respect for one another, or maybe a mixture of all the above? And if we can't agree on that question or at least have somewhat unified goals in getting there, how can education exist to serve it? In addition, we're also gonna ask, do teachers have and deserve a good life? We've spoken to various educators from across the world, and I hope you enjoy listening to their amazing thoughts and ideas. But first, our podcast is kept alive by generous patrons on Patreon, two of which are Bill Ryder and Matt Laughlin. Thank you so much for your support. You can find more information about what the Human Restoration Project is and how we're helping promote progressive education through free resources, thoughts, and more on our website at humanrestorationproject.org and on Twitter at humrespro. Which brings us to Stephen Gumbay, a veteran teacher of forty years. Stephen started off in Denver, Colorado at a private school and then designed his own curriculum for twelve years.

Speaker 2 Stephen then said I had a parent say, you should take a group of kids to Kenya. And so I was like, wow. You know, I'll do that. And quick story was it it all worked out, and I just fell in love with rural Kenya. It really shocked me to see, like, Maasai kids with no electricity take nine courses and do extremely well, you know, and yet walk across the savannah of the school. And there was sort of a, I don't know, a discord between that and teaching essentially, we're kids at a private school in in Colorado. I just felt the need to to put my energies into a place that was different, know. It's something really called to me. This started a journey that took Stephen across Taiwan,

Speaker 1 Zambia, Kenya, Hong Kong, Myanmar, and eventually Ethiopia. Acting as a science department chair and building secondary, primary, and preschool programs. He essentially took every opportunity thrown at him, dealing with for profit organizations which quickly turned them off, governments who removed all older American expats, and full direct government takeovers of schools. And now, back in Ethiopia, he's consulting a large private school on the first steps of a progressive education journey. The detailed experiences

Speaker 2 in each of these places has just been incredibly, you know, rich. And I in many ways, it has not been good. Now I would say in general ways, the people who run schools, whether they're private or they're international schools that are not for profit, there is a lot of incompetency and mediocrity in the way schools are run-in every one of these places. And quite honestly, the only good head of school I've ever worked for was the one back in Colorado in the beginning, and I haven't seen anybody experienced anybody abroad that was above mediocre. And yet the children have been just fun and good. I mean, kids are kids everywhere. And the learning aspect of it is, you know, being in the classroom and creating things that see kids become excited about learning and turned on to learning. That's been the same everywhere, and that's the real joy of all of that. The biz the business of education has got some immense challenges ahead of it. And in his latest endeavor, he's found a similar problem that we face in The United States and really everywhere. I think the biggest challenge is it's completely teacher centered. So the idea of give let me give you this example of the school I'm starting to work with now. I visited there. And again, 4,000 kids from kindergarten to high school. That's a big school. The average class size that I saw was 30 to 35. So say I go into a third grade class, and they're they're learning English. Well, they're only budgeting in their time time frame two sessions a week for for English. And what they do is that the teacher gets up and he he's teaching grammar rules. So here in Ethiopia, that's very standard. The local the regional teachers are trained in universities in rules of grammar, and it's all rogue learning. They don't really understand the English language, but they understand the rules. So they'll have a sentence and they'll get tell the kids, maybe they'll do introductions, sort of how we do introductions, what's formal and what's informal. And they'll call two or three kids up to do that, then they'll move on to the next example. So in a class that I watched for forty five minutes or so, there were probably five kids that had a spoken moment, an interactive moment. And the rest of the kids just sit there at attention, and they note things in their book. Whatever's written on the board, they write down. That isn't really learning, and it goes completely against how kids learn language. The research shows that they can learn 10 to 12 words a day, and none of that is sitting in a chair and copying off of a board. It's all social. My biggest challenge in working with teachers is to realize that they've got this whole thing backwards, and it they shouldn't be the center of anything and to turn it over to the kids, you know. So when you've had a teacher who's been doing this for many years and has a lot of pride in the way they're doing it, you can't go in and imply, listen, you're doing this all wrong even though that's exactly what I'm thinking. You know? You have to find an incremental way to introduce new things to them, but the vast majority are are just extremely resistant to change. So it's teacher centered. You know? It's like, I'm the fountain of information. And again, you've got thirty, forty kids, maybe more, so compliance and order is really important. I wanna try and get these teachers, particularly the ones that are motivated at this new school, to just try the idea of setting up group work. Put the kids in their own conversation groups, you know, make 12 groups of kids. It's not stone age mentality, but it's a bronze age mentality towards education. You can't really fault people because they were educated that way.

Speaker 1 If we are to establish the good life for students, we have to have teachers who understand what it is that they're trying to do and how they're going to get there. Teacher training programs may bring up progressive ideas. I'm pretty confident most educators know who Dewey is. But in practice, we're typically taught to be directors of a traditional system. As in how to reach particular standards in an efficient way and how to do well on standardized tests. After all, that's what our future employers will likely want. The question then becomes, how can we train teachers to teach progressive values? How can we train them to be basically rebels in the system that doesn't have a student's best interest at heart? And even more so, how do you convince a traditional teacher that what they're doing is well, wrong?

Speaker 2 Well, you know, you have to do a little bit of everything is my view. It came home to me in very, very hard way, difficult ways when I was it first came to Ethiopia, I was a science department chairman. And there were a group of old veteran British teachers. Most of those Brits that I've met teaching abroad feel they've got the answers. They know the gold standard. The rest of the world just needs to get with the program, and then they do the same thing. I had nine faculty, and seven of the nine disliked me right away. I go into a class every day and say, I hope this goes well, but at night, I go home and say, wow. Could I have done that better? The best teachers I've ever worked with are very harsh on themselves. They're they're very tough critics, and they're always looking for a better way to motivate. And if you're a good teacher, it's a very humbling profession because you can feel great one day and just, you know, have a great lesson plan the following day and it just falls. And so you need to be freshly creative. And and if you're freshly creative and you have energy, the kids pick up on that, and they'll they'll come with you. But the old Brits just were so angry with me. So I just asked in the first meeting, I said, I'd like us since we're all new to each other, I'd like to know why we do what we do. Why do you why do you like working with kids? What do you enjoy about teaching science? And they thought that was the most absurd thing for me to ask them. They were insulted. And so I you know, here I came from research where being fresh and attacking things and problem solving and working together was just natural. And I thought that would be a way to introduce trying to look at some new things. And it just became a battle because they were insulted by that approach. Towards the end, I said, how can you use a handout from 1982 in a biology class? And I said, why can't you get excited about what's new out there and show the kids you're learning with them? And that's I think that's the key point somewhere is that whether it's in The US or in a school somewhere in the world, there are a group of teachers who are doing their job. I often describe it as they're delivering the mail, and that's what they think their job is. Then there's a group of teachers who feel

Speaker 1 they're there to excite the kids to learn because they're excited about learning. They've never lost their love for learning. And I think that's a critical difference. So that seems like we're at a crossroads. Right? If someone's closed minded and they're not willing to accept changing how their classroom looks and if they think that they're superior or infallible, they're not going to ever consider that what they're doing is wrong, which I suppose means that the only way to go forward is to fire closed minded teachers. It's very rare that I would come across someone who is a traditional teacher who started off as progressive. Most progressive educators started off as traditional. We kinda know both sides. So is it that we just want to ensure maybe that newly hired teachers are those that we wanna stick around people that are progressively minded? I sent them something like what you sent me. I sent them

Speaker 2 three or four probing essay questions, including a question about tell me an experience in the classroom that you'll remember forever and value, And tell me one out of the classroom. And if people can't answer that, then the fire is not there. And see, my point is that if you're in the position of training new teachers or hiring teachers, you can always teach skills. But if someone says they have skills and the fire is not there, how do you teach the fire? You can't. The heart of teaching can't be taught. That's a real conundrum in all of education because we need millions and millions of teachers, and they're not all gonna have that kind of art. It is a huge challenge in getting teachers to come along, and I think anybody that tells you they know how to do that is lying. It's a dance with adults that have set up all sorts of barriers and guidelines for learning and protecting their professional integrity. You know? To be a learner, you have to be vulnerable. You have to say, I don't know. In the adult world, that's very hard to get people to do. Kids are easy. They're willing to learn until we beat it out of them. But adults, that's that's the tough one. I would love to be able to write a book on how to to motivate and get teachers to come along like that. But I think it's a real dance, and it it it has to be programmatic. There has to be

Speaker 1 higher up support for this. You know? They need to realize it's part of their job demand that to be they have professional development and that they have to show it. Yeah. And then wouldn't that lead to an issue of people leaving? One thing I think a lot about is that progressive educators likely left the profession because of the traditional constraints and mindset of our institutions. Without a support network, we're basically in like the Wild West. Many times, I feel like I can legitimately be fired by giving students actual voice, assuming that it goes against the standards or potentially lowers one of their test scores. International schools have the problem of turnover. There's turnover of leadership.

Speaker 2 The school in Lusaka had or set a record that they had the most heads of school. It had two of them came and went in the two years I was there. And that alone make just creates chaos. Boards are often not healthy. Then on top of that, you get a variety of teachers, and you can I can sort of lump them into types, but you do get a large variety of teachers? And even those teachers may not stay very long. They do bring a number of different agendas. But I have found that, again, like I said, there's sort of a British model. They're just there to perpetuate what's been done before. It's about control and being rigid. And then they had essentially communists and sons of communists in horrible years here, and so you have a couple generations raised under another kind of control. We're imprinted very young with ways of learning. What's acceptable? What isn't? What are the best ways, etcetera? And sort of this Western view of being open and and analyzing, you know, you're seeing it in The US now. You're seeing a huge minority of people in The US. I'm not gonna go into politics here, but you see there's a significant part of the country that is not progressive, is not open minded, is not intellectually curious. But some of the challenges in international schools when you throw in the cultural context you know, look at Myanmar. It's a military controlled, you know, government. You see that effects in the way people think and the way they deal with authority. There's a lot of teaching in Asia that's real nice because Asian kids overall are incredibly respectful of authority. And so you'll see teachers who have taught in really tough schools in The UK or The US or in South Africa. And they love coming to Asia because you don't have any discipline problems. You you may have kids having nervous breakdowns because they got their first b,

Speaker 1 but, you know, that's that's your crisis for the year. To be clear, the implication you're making is that this authoritarianism,

Speaker 2 the academic rigor is not necessarily a good thing? No. Not necessarily at all. I would have kids sign up. I oh, I'm gonna take the SAT again. Well, how many times have you taken? Well, this is my sixth time. I said, you know, what are you doing? Are you crazy? I don't even remember what I got on the SAT now. There's there's very little joy in learning. And so the school I was at, the American school in Hong Kong, it called itself an American school, but the the the headmaster was a Scottish guy who was he used to come to assemblies to make sure the girls didn't have fingernail polish on and that their socks were the right length. He wouldn't come to listen to music or the the kids were just amazing what they could do, and he just wanted to check their socks and their fingernails. So that told you how what kind of a manager he was. And then the principal, he was just worried about everything in order and make sure we keep these parents happy, and he was a very fearful man. And I had a group of ninth graders in, like, homeroom, and they had all these classes. And at the end of the day, they had, like, a fifteen minute homeroom. And we had a meeting where someone said we've got what's what kind of work can we have them do in those fifteen minutes? And I I said nothing. And they looked at me like, no. We have to use this time. And I just kept quiet. I I refused to do it because these kids, they would be taking two or three APs. They push all this, and then they leave school and they go to something at night, you know, cello lesson or something. And at the last fifteen minutes of a day in high school, they can't put up their feet and talk to each other or talk to me about an issue. So I just used to shut the door, and we had a had a fun time as we unwound at the end of the day. Or I'd show them a Monty Python video to get them to realize, you know, there's more to life than worrying about grades because their parents are quite neurotic. And so to me, I had to be a counterweight. And I think actually any effective teacher realizes after a while, the group of kids they have, you need to be a counterweight for whatever kind of negative influences or, you know, kids are bringing the class. What's missing? And these kids didn't have a lot of healthy, fun connections with adults. We're all human, you know. There are some days you're just like, I can't do it today.

Speaker 1 And that's okay. And to tie this back to training teachers to doing what's best for students to give them human centered approaches that care and love them, How do we actively encourage that rather than it being something that's subversive or something you're doing in spite of what authority says? How can it be more explicit? When you're teaching teachers, you can't fall into the same habit that you're criticizing schools for. It shouldn't be less,

Speaker 2 teacher centered. I'm not there to tell them how to do something. I wanna sit down as I what I did with the primary school teachers here, we ended up with nine teachers all. Now that sounds small, but we started there. We used to have the most fun faculty meetings. I led them, and I had somewhat of an agenda, but I I said I wanna run this like a graduate seminar. We're all equal here. The American National Academy of Science, you know, in The US has these two series, how people learn and how people learn too. They're just wonderful, wonderful things. And I said, I wanna take a chapter a week or chapter every other couple weeks. You go read it, and we'll come back and we'll discuss it. And I I wanted to sort of mentor and coach them. I didn't wanna teach them. I did show them some videos to excite them, to show them teachers who had completely reversed their teaching and let the kids decide, for instance, in AP biology, which labs they were gonna do. And so I got them thinking about that, but I wanted them to realize that we were learning as a group. I didn't have all the answers. You know, the kids that we had here in Ethiopia, we had a very mixed group of kids, and they were all trying to learn English, and they offered a lot of challenges. But it was real fun because we could do whatever we wanted, and that's how I approached it. I said, I'm not here to tell you the 10 commandments, and this is what we do. Let us figure out how to do this. But I want you to know if what is learning? And so we started with some of that, and and it was great. They really appreciated it because I found out one Australian lady had had a lot of good education, particularly in English language instruction. I felt more like a very much like a coach. We always enjoyed our beatings. We laughed. We pushed each other. We demanded a lot, but it was all for the kids, and it was all for us to enjoy what we were doing. I think we gotta remember that I know when I've been in sessions or someone's given me professional development, I'm almost a cynic going in because most of them are boring, at least my time. No one's ever actually got me directly involved. There was one exception. It was a writing workshop that I went into thinking, oh, this won't be very good. And it was wonderful. Why? Because they all put us to work, and we were prompted and then let go. And we got to know each other, we formed bonds, we listened to each other, and, you know, I they treated us like good learners. I think teaching is something as an art that has to be learned by doing. But that kind of collegiality is very difficult to build, and you can throw in one really toxic person that doesn't like that, and that's the the difficult part of management and leadership in in any business, dealing with the personality types. But, you know, my goal going into it is to always come in as an equal. And I think teachers need to have a stronger sense of that kind of professionalism, and they do in certain core areas, in certain groups. You know? You could be in very healthy groups. But if you teach around much at all, you've also been around unhealthy groups. But and particularly in really large schools, that's where it breaks down. You could have a lot more impact just like a classroom of 15 versus a class of 40. It's just it's completely different.

Speaker 1 Human restoration project, the whole point of it is to find like minded people in progressive ed to ensure that you're not crazy. I know when I first got started with these things, read a few books, and it felt good that authors agreed with me. But it was really hard to find people that actually thought that the traditional system was wrong that weren't someone acting outside of the education system. There are plenty of teachers out there in many different pockets who believe these things who maybe aren't allowed to share their thoughts, maybe are kind of hesitant to be more frank about it, but there's a lot of them. And I think that we need something that helps unite us all, and that is meant to be the human restoration project. As you walk into practically any school in The United States, you'll be greeted by a mission statement somewhere in the building. Saying something like, to prepare students for life and job prospects, to produce literate responsible citizens, to succeed in an ever changing community, ready for the future, to be college and career ready. But we don't often stop and really think about what we're aiming toward. And everyone seems to have a different view on what is best for their child. And without a doubt, children have their own ideas on what they want. How often do we listen to them? And do we really know what's best for them? Teachers aiming to meet all of these differing voices are faced with unrelenting pressure to conform to a system that likely isn't reaching any of these objectives and are struggling to figure out, well, what's next. Taking on the challenge of defining what the good life is is reenvisioned, headed up by Aaron Robb and Nicole Hensel. The program was born out of the Stanford Graduate School of Education and is seeking to do a massive reenvisioning process of figuring out what the good life is through a series of interviews of roughly 10,000 people. They partner with schools, individuals, and community organizations to collect and share these stories about what it means to live a good life and what the role of school is in doing so. Erin holds a PhD in education from Stanford where her scholarship pertained to the question on how can we transform education systems to foster individual flourishing and thriving democracies. And Nicole obtained a dual masters in public policy and educational leadership also from Stanford. You can find all of their work in the attached show notes. Currently, Aaron serves as the vice president of research and evaluation and Nicole, the deputy vice president of research and evaluation at the future project, which is a nonprofit organization that helps ensure that young people can build a better life in the world that they love. So in summary, Reinvision Ed wants to figure out what exactly is the good life by, well, asking what that means. With a shared vision, we'll be able to build something to meet it. Erin explains.

Speaker 3 So the idea about asking about a good life was really, like, trying to understand better. I had done all of this work from a systems perspective thinking about, like, well, what is a system for? Right? Like, what is the purpose of schooling more broadly? And came out with across whether it be sociology or economics or teacher training or, you know, whichever body of literature, like whether it be policy. There were kind of four major ways of thinking about the purpose of school for purposes. You can think about mapping these onto two axes which are on the y axis, it would be intrinsic to instrumental and on the x from individual to collective. And I think the individual to collective, the fact that we have individual reasons why we have school and we have collective reasons we have school is is fairly intuitive. I think the fact that we have reasons for school that happened through the actual practice, the everyday experience of school, which are the intrinsic ones, and reasons we have school that are instrumental, the ways we use schooling as a system to achieve other kinds of outcomes is a little less intuitive. And intrinsic reason, so something that happens through school itself, through the experience of school that's individual is like the classic human development. This is like how do we ensure kids learn literacy? How do they develop empathy? These kinds of things that like an individual develops curiosity over time. If you think about intrinsic and collective, this is like the socialization processes that school serves. So this is like how do we socialize citizens into a shared set of values? How do we create a we, a sense of who we are at the micro level and at the macro level at a national level, right? Like, what does it mean to be American? Right? And then who belongs and who doesn't? Those all happen through how we do school and how we learn how to be with one another. And so those are the intrinsic purposes. Those are individual possibility and social possibility. And the instrumental side, you have social efficiency which is like the classic economic kind of perspective on schooling and much of a lot of policy. This is the like. How do we make sure we can grow our GDP? How do we make sure we have enough STEM workers? How do we make sure we have enough teachers? Right? Like, how do we make sure we fill all the different positions in society and compete as an economy? And then on the individual and instrumental, you have individual efficiency which is like how do I make sure my kid ends up at the top of the socioeconomic system oftentimes or makes it or in a in a in a better framing, how do we make sure they make it into the right job for them? Right? How do they use they navigate the system to get the outcomes that they care about most? But it's not really necessarily through the the schooling system itself. It's by, like, accruing the credits. So essentially, reenvisioned aims to figure out how people view education in these lens, then find a way to share how people plan on getting there. And what came out of that work of creating this kind of meta framework for putting all these different ways we talk about the purposes of schooling into one conversation, a, I really wanna understand because, like, oftentimes, we conflate these. And if you talk about social efficiency and human development in one sentence, what you need to do to achieve those is often different. And so you just, like, end up muddling what it is. I think this is why we have a lot of issues in terms of our conversations about school because we want to achieve all of those purposes. Right? But, like, what it means to do that can be slightly different. And I think that's particularly true if you try and design for the instrumental purposes. I think if you design for the intrinsic, you get all four. And that's a much longer conversation as to like how. But, like, if you design for the experience itself, I think that you can you can create a system that achieves all four purposes. Where I think right now, we largely design for individual efficiency, which I think is is highly detrimental. What I was really curious about was, like, to what extent there would be a shared vision. And I wanted to ask about a good life because oftentimes when we ask about school, if you go and ask somebody how are you gonna reenvision school, they have all kinds of implicit assumptions. You can think about the theory of change of being, like, what kind of lives in society do we wanna create? What do we think the role of school is in creating that? Is my school doing that or is it not? And if not, why not? And I think that almost all of our conversations start on if not, why not? And we rarely understand even if we're aiming for the same kinds of, lives. And you can't understand people's diagnosis about what's wrong with schools unless you understand about, the kinds of lives they think they wanna create and what they think the role of school is in doing that. And to do this, reenvision Ed as cataloging stakeholders,

Speaker 1 students, parents, community members, teachers, administrators, and more, and asking a series of questions on what the good life is to them,

Speaker 3 then you're sharing this common vision out? Two things. One, that we think it's about the process and not the answer. You could send a survey to everybody and get some answers and then try and design from that. But we think it's about a process of having conversations about what it is we ultimately want. And the same way that as individual, it's a reflection itself on your purpose is oftentimes more important than what you come out with as like what the actual purpose is. And then two, that I think we often think about school as preparation for the future, but in the same way that Dewey would talk about that as being a false way of looking about it. Like, it's actually about living today how you want people to become. Right? Like, we are the like, how we create habits of being for ourselves and with one another is the kind of society we're gonna create. And so it's not so much about some future state, but rather about how do we live that now. And, no, you can view all of reenvisioned's

Speaker 1 work, including videos and transcripts on their website.

Speaker 4 Nicole adds We believe that this kind of conversation cannot draw solely from the opinions of policy elites or researchers, but it truly needs to be a collaborative meaning making process that involve stakeholders across the country, parents, teachers, students, community members. And so that is why we set the ambitious goal of capturing the voices of 10,000 people across the country and asking them to articulate their theory of change or schooling. So what makes a good life? What kind of society do they want to live in? Do they want their children to live in? What is the role of school in creating these lives and these communities? And do we think schools are currently playing that role, and why or why not? And then do you think others agree with you? And we hope that these conversations remain things. The first of which is that we hope that the conversation itself is really powerful. Think something that Erin mentioned earlier is that it would be it would be relatively easy for us to send out a Google survey to 10,000 people and say, hey, what do you think the purpose of school is? And we might get some interesting responses. And in fact, I think there is, like, a poll that does that currently. But what that doesn't allow for is the is to allow space for reflection to, sit down with someone that you love and grapple with tough questions. And, we believe truly that the power of the 10,000 interviews is not just in the number 10,000, but is in the process of,

Speaker 1 meaningful reflection with people you care about. So after we've gathered this data and we begin to interpret it, Erin likens our classrooms to a garden and in this case, a tomato garden. There are two things that teachers have control over, and it's not the, like, size,

Speaker 3 redness, or, like, actual full development of the, like, tomato, a an individual tomato itself. What what what they have control over is the school and classroom environment they create, and they have control over the experiences they design. And it turns out that human beings, similar but different tomatoes, we'll we'll just keep pushing this keep pushing this metaphor, depend very heavily on the social environment that they're in. And that we have social psychological needs that are just as important as our physiological as our physical needs. So, like, food and water, we need. And you can think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right? But there's been a huge amount of research around, like, these core social psychological needs. And we have needs for a sense of autonomy, so a sense that, like, our actions are volitional. Need for competence. This is from social self determination theory. Ryan and DC, it's, like, forty to fifty years of research. We have a need to feel competent, and that doesn't mean in the way we often use that in schools, but in the sense of, like, I can predict that my what what the result of my behavior is going to be. So you can think about that in in if if you have a very unpredictable environment, it undermines your sense of confidence. Right? Like, if you can't ever predict day to day what's going to happen, you feel less confident in it. We have a need for a relatedness with other people. Right? We are, like, fundamentally and before anything else social creatures. And so the need to be feel seen and to be related to others is a core need. And then from a different body of literature, we have a a need for meaning. Like, we're constantly we are meaning making creatures. We like, and part of that is, like, purpose. Right? So you can think about that. But we make meaning in lots of different ways out of our life. You can think about that through religion, through philosophy, lots of different ways of making meaning. But but we have these four core needs. And when we design environments, I'm gonna go through a couple design principles. But I think, one, there are things you can add. So for, like, autonomy support, you give kids more choice. You give more direction. You you let allow them the freedom to think about what it is that they want and how it aligns with their interests. Right? There are also things that stand in the way. So I'm gonna first go through the things that stand in the way because oftentimes we think about adding things in. But, actually, it's just I think we've largely designed schools to stand in the way of our ability to meet our core needs. And so thinking about that alienation and anomie. So when rules are too tight or too loose. If you have too too much of a structure or too little of a structure, it makes people it undermines people's sense of autonomy and their sense of confidence. If you have a high shame, all of Brene Brown's work on shame and how that inhibits our ability to relate with others, to to show up as our full selves in our environment, Scarcity has very predictable effects, not just scarcity of, like, money, but scarcity of time, scarcity of resources. And think about educators. I mean, maybe I can just ask you, like, how much it just feels like there is never enough time. Like, how much, like, we design, like, classrooms so that, like, in our forty two minutes and thirty seconds together every day, right, we're gonna, like, get through all of these different things. Like, there's just this constant enforced time scarcity as well as just never feeling that there are enough resources. And that both inhibits our ability to, like, be empathetic with one another. Actually inhibits your ability to, like, feel empathy for others. Think about when you're, like, really rushed to go to a meeting.

Speaker 1 Right? And you pass by somebody, it looks like they're having a bad day. You're way less likely to stop. There's a ton to consider here. If you wanna learn more about Erin's research, I highly encourage you to check out her work in our show notes and at reenvisioned. And in addition to their work at reenvisioned, Erin Nicole both were just hired on at the future project. The future project aims to

Speaker 3 make sure that every person can build a life and world that they love, starting with youth. And right now, our main program is one in which we put dream directors in schools. So a dream director is like a new role in in a school. It's like part role model, part coach, part mentor, part educator, and they work with a cohort of students to develop a set of mindsets and skill sets to allow students to identify what it is they care about and and pursue that and to create projects that benefit their community. Right? So to think about what it is they hope to see in their school and how they wanna serve other students in their school. And so we're doing a case study, for instance, right now on one of our longest running dream directors, and, really, it's been a whole school transformation over six and a half years now. Right? But, like and really student led and student and student voice thinking about how to shift school culture in these particular ways. So our major program is one in which dream directors work with students in schools, and I think oh, man. I know that we're in nearly 50 schools, and I'm going to mess up the number of states because we have, like, three different sites in Connecticut. But we're in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, DC, Chicago, Detroit, LA, and San Francisco. We've just launched a new program, which is a three day version. So you can think about Dream Directors as, like, really intervening in the entire ecosystem. Right? Creating like a greenhouse, if you're thinking about that metaphor. But we just launched Future Camp, which is how many how many sites are they visiting? They've done three. 10. But I think they're visiting 10 sites, and it's like a three day intensive transformative experience for students where they go through a lot of the different exercises. They meet other students from other schools. So I think about a 150 students from around the community come together and learn about each other and envision for their community and and learn the skills to kind of begin driving change themselves.

Speaker 1 So in summary, check out these programs and see if they interest you. Re envision Ed is a free learning experience for your students to share their story and open that dialogue, as well as you could take the survey yourself. Nicole explains what that process is like. I actually think

Speaker 4 for teachers to go through the interview process, the interview protocol that we have on our website. So even if teachers just look at the questions that we have in the interview protocol and do their own reflection on what they believe their personal theory of change of schooling is both at the individual and collective level, that that and that that vision becomes a grounding for the types of environments and experiences that they cultivate in their classrooms, the ways that they relate with students. I think that although my skill as an educator improved over my time in the classroom, that actually, I was much closer to my personal vision for schooling in my first year of teaching, although everything was else was a disaster. I think that I am more proud of the work that I did in that first year because it was more in alignment with my values and my vision for school versus as I became more seasoned in the classroom, I think I adapted what I thought was important to what the system was reflecting back to me was important, what my school district was reflecting back to me as important. And so advice I would give to teachers, you know, walking into their classroom is is to do that deep internal reflection on their personal theory of change for schooling, and then almost, like, pressure testing how their current environment and experiences are doing in cultivating the daily practice of that vision. As Erin mentioned before, like, this idea that if we want students to, you know, be curious and empathetic and kind, that that's not something you prepare them for in the future. That's something they have to practice daily. And so if we're really clear on, you know, the kinds of lives we want for children in the long term and the kind of societies that we want children to be a part of than ensuring that our classrooms are daily reflections of those values and that vision. I have a lot of regrets of, like, how I how my teaching style changed over my time in the classroom because I had lost sight of that. And I and I wish that I could go back to those years and reprioritize the things that I knew to be true even though I was, you know, 22 years old. I think I was much closer than I was at the very end of my time.

Speaker 1 And that point that Nicole just made is the resounding theme of the rest of this podcast. There's so much to unpack and discover. As we push for progressive educated values, letting children learn, removing rank and file standardization, stopping feel bad education, and ensuring teachers are empowered to do so, the question becomes, how do we even do that? And how can we maintain our sanity while we push our developing collective vision?

Speaker 5 And so I had an advantage a lot of teachers didn't have is I was working for ten years and then got ten years off basically and read nothing but recent wanted to see what could I do to improve how things work.

Speaker 1 This is Richard Lubroviti, an educator who finished career at a top ranked charter school in The United States, then ventured overseas with his wife, a US diplomat. While searching for work, he reminisced on the work of Alfie Cohn, which was recommended by one of his elite student's parents.

Speaker 5 And being a curious individual, he started to incorporate progressive ideas into parenting as well as a new position at international school in Chengdu, China. When I got into this school, it was finally a time after even a year of homeschooling my kids and and doing all this research and reading. Finally gave me an opportunity to say, alright, here's what I believe. Now how do I implement it without getting fired? Because to go gradeless, I wanted students to direct their own learning. I wanted all these things that I've discovered work with my own children, with other children I came in touch with, with other people I knew who homeschooled and things like that. How how do I help these students get that? And one of the very first new teacher orientation days, our headmaster said what is one the things in the next five years education better do to stay relevant? And I said, take up some of the principles of homeschooling and unschooling. And he said, I think you're exactly right. And so I knew I had a head of school now who was open to a lot of different things. And so I thought, alright. Here we go. Richard taught IB English, which is an advanced program typically aimed at accelerated academics to both native and non native speakers. First, the class that was on their first year, I said, here, guys. Here's what the e IB gives me. You design the course. Let's do it together. Why should I tell you what to study? And they loved it. And so we designed a two year scope and sequence that actually ended up changing because our desires changed. We found out we weren't as interested after one year in the stuff that we thought a year ago that we would be interested in. It was even this this thing that that wasn't set in stone. It could change as it went along. And because the IB has its own summative exam at the end of two years that gives them a score and kinda undermines a lot of the philosophy of the IB itself, I never had to grade anything. So it was easy to go gradeless and to let students direct their own learning, pick their own books, things like that because the ethos of the IB was that way and I had a headmaster that that wanted to do it. And I had these students and this class, there were 10 students in it and I think one was from Brazil, one was from Taiwan, and the others were local Chengdu kids who got passports from somewhere else and allowed them to go to an international school. I didn't find any problems. I said they they were open to it, they wanted to do it, they liked the idea of doing it. We even studied man's effect on nature, think was the thing that we studied. And we actually used that as a way to discuss schooling's effect on the nature of an individual. And so they got all into it. And even the students in that class had started a company while in the last two years of helping other Chinese kids understand how Westerners teach and what those philosophies are as as sort of this after school program for kids in traditional Chinese schools. So he had a profitable company when he graduated and took a gap year to run it, and then he's at UC Berkeley now. So there there's there's a lot of good things that were happening in that class. I didn't run into a problem though with the typical what what we would see as a stereotypical mindset of I need you just tell me what to know and I will give it back to you until I wanna talk English a and did the same thing. These were for the more advanced English speakers and they've had more exposure to Western ideas. Two of the students in the class didn't like the approach as much. They wanted to know what do I need to pass this IB exam with a six or seven and how do I just do that. Don't don't give me choices. Don't tell me, you know, tell me what I need. And so they were more resistant to it, and I found that it took a while to convince them. I had to convince them that, you know, I've taught at freshman composition at university when I was in grad school. I know where you're going. I wanna ignore the exam right now and help give you the skills that will help you succeed best where you're going. Not just past CIB. I said I can give you the high skills you need for that exam two to four weeks leading up to the exam. Don't worry about that. We'll we'll focus on that when it's necessary. And so it took a while. I had to build trust, with them first. So then when I think about Chinese academics and assume that their idea of preparing for the future is rigorous traditional academics, is that not the case? Right. And and they did. The the student who I told you ended up starting this company. He came from a a mother who was in, the military. But it was very interesting because they did open him up to art and other things and he was a very diverse he was a math physics guy no doubt. It was interesting that these parents all had some kind of influence in that realm. For one of the girls in the class, who was interested in economics and actually had started a business on her own, she painted dolls faces. I didn't even know there was a market for this but people would send her expensive dolls because I thought, oh I'll get her to do it for my daughter's for her birthday. I'll buy a doll and see if she pay. I couldn't afford the doll. The what she charges to paint faces on them. And she was into economics. Well, of course, because she's our but her dad actually during one conference with her econ teacher said, what do you think about a girl studying economics? So her interest in this was maybe even a rebellion against this over the course in life. But otherwise there were a lot of students in that class who had parents that were very open to these ideas as well. And that's what I have to be grateful for as well. Not only a headmaster, it seemed like a convergence of a lot of forces at one time, but I had parents who never questioned, and I couldn't believe this, that I never gave a grade during the semester, this is especially important in eighth grade English where there was an ABC grade, never questioned the fact that not one assignment ever had a grade on it but at the end of a semester, their kids had grades. They never questioned that because I had a whole room of kids working on different things. I had six of 12 kids in this class working on their own novels and by the end of the year, six of them had 50,000 plus words at least of their own novel. I had, the other students who were in that class said I wanna work on this genre of writing. So I taught them how to look at a piece of writing that's that people have published in in this genre and pick out little things to play with, little formal elements to play with and do that on your own. You can do that. And so they would submit writing and I'd give them comments and give it back and then they would work on a new piece and then rewrite this other piece. And so I let them establish what is it that kind of grade you think you deserve for this? And then I talk to them after we each have a conference, know, ten minutes with each kid, and they would tell me what they think they earned and I had no reason to distrust them. It's amazing how few A's you still have when kids are grading themselves. Kids I'm like, I'm not giving you a B, I'm gonna give you an A. I'm sorry, I refuse to listen to you on this one. Because they're so they've been beaten down so long. And a lot of the feedback was, you know, thanks for making me realize I could write, that I can learn to write, that I have something valuable. But the parents never questioned any of that. I I think it was just they trusted me. Their kids always came back with, mister Lupita is doing this thing with me and I really enjoy it and I feel like I'm learning. So What I find interesting about your story is that it seems like progressive education practices

Speaker 1 just fall into place and work. We spend so much time trying to figure out how to engage kids with gimmicky lesson plans or make them comply with grades or outlandish, like, drill and kill practices. Certainly funding our education systems better to lower the number of students per class would be really beneficial. But even in spite of that, do you find that your stress and well-being as a teacher improved because you adopted Progressive N? It became loads easier because I quit planning.

Speaker 5 Quit writing lessons. I I had years of that. I got lucky. Every job I had in education after grad school, I had to design my own curriculum from scratch. I started at a school that was adding grades as they went along. So I was in on writing ninth grade curriculum, in on writing eleventh grade curriculum. I taught at St. Albans in Washington DC which is all boys school, elite all boys school and National Cathedral School. They allowed me free rein to write the curriculum when I taught seventh grade. People have always allowed me to write curriculum and design lessons and all that. So I never worried about not being able to come up with something on the spot. I had these years of experience. And so that was awesome because I could deal with each thing as it occurred and as was necessary. I didn't have to plan for a whole room of individuals, some who might not need anything that I have to say that day and some might need a lot more, previous to that to even get to where I was that day. And so it wonderfully freeing. And instead of worrying about lessons, I would go down and play basketball with kids during the break to get to know them better. I would hang out at lunch. I didn't worry about writing, you know, grading or anything at lunch because I had students come to my room, they would eat in my room and we'd I I joined them for lunch. And I would get to know I mean, yeah, in some ways it's easier but it's much more difficult because you have to be scared to death at some point that what if I'm wrong? What if what if I'm not directing them the way they should be directed? What if what if they don't get something vital? But I've always found that if you've developed that relationship and you you really concern yourself with individuals, that you're gonna find out that if you do see somebody who needs something, like kids wanna go to school in college, well I do need to have them write a literary or understand how to develop a literary analysis. And as as much as I hate, I think the analysis paper in English class has done more to destroy a love of reading than than maybe anything else. My eighth graders, I did tell them, look, here's a skill you might want. Now I can give it to you, but I want you to select the book. I want you to to I'm not gonna grade you on it, but I want you to see how we read. And so I let them select a novel, and as a class we went through it together, talked about it. I showed them how I develop an idea for what a book might mean or or or something like that and it worked. It worked out fine. But I've always found that kids will take recommendations if they trust you. Yeah. And it seems like building trust, developing positive relationships,

Speaker 1 it typically leads us to creating slightly revolutionary students, perhaps in a Paulo Freire esque way. We're empowering students to understand and to an extent play the system, which if you're going to be giving students voice and choice, it kinda makes sense that you're using them under the blanket of traditional you have to do this mentality as you're kinda telling them about the system that they're playing.

Speaker 5 I have used that we're rebels against the whole system thing to motivate. I mean, that one class, the English B class that everybody bought in pretty quickly, I decided to give them sort of that final lecture thing. I said, look, we're talking all year. This final class period is yours. You each get what, ten minutes. You give the whole class one final lecture. What is it you've gotten now for as you're about to graduate high school? What is it you want us to know? And I didn't know it was going to do this but it ended up turning into a big crying fest about we've learned more than this is the class that we've learned stuff in. This is the the way that and I've never done that as a way of you know, seeking praise or something like that. It was a way of giving them another chance to voice us. What is it you really want everyone to know now that you're graduating about your experience? I even found out that one of the girls in the class, who wanted to go study in Korea and go to Korean university and interestingly spent a year and a half teaching in Korea too. And we talk about Korean, she was teaching herself the Korean language. I was the only person who told her that she should go and that I loved it. And everybody else was telling me why would you wanna go there blah blah blah. And she on that day broke down. I had never even known over the last two years my support of her dreams there meant so much. So at the very end of that class I said look I've never asked you guys for a favor, but on this last test in English, your English B exam, I'm gonna ask for one favor and that is prove me right. That's the only favor I want. If you do well on this exam, you're gonna prove me right and you're gonna prove yourselves right. You're gonna prove to everyone that there's a better way, a more humane way. And the numbers showed that that grade on that exam for them was almost a full point higher than all their other exams. During the summer I found out all the numbers and I've had since had lunch with some or things like that or been in communication with most of them. And I said, well, thank you because you did it. I think part of that mentality of we're fighting a system that hasn't been just to us, I think moved them in some ways. I don't know if people can think it's hokey, I guess, but you know if we read Henry the fifth, that's basically how he united all of Britain is he found, hey, let's attack France. Let's find a common enemy for all of us and

Speaker 1 and let's all gather around that common enemy. So How then do we instill progressive vibes in the schools and convince other educators that these aren't hokey ideas? I know that some people see it as like the hippie kumbaya thing. We're all sitting around in a circle talking about how we feel. And that really isn't the point of recognizing individuals as people, although it certainly could be a major element. But how can we convince people that progressive education is honestly a lot more rigorous and challenging than traditional ed because we're letting students have so much of that control that they're pushing themselves? I've read

Speaker 5 some some introductions, some books where they go over the history of progressive ed and and these are books that are meant to discount progressive education.

Speaker 1 And I never found one of those books that alluded to the eight year study. If you're not familiar, the eight year study was conducted throughout the nineteen thirties and the early nineteen forties, and it looked at students of progressively focused schools, ones that had cross disciplinary classes, more arts and music programs, blended learning, and in general, a more fluid learning environment. It looked at everything from very traditional rank and file schools to really interesting experimental schools. And usually, what these results showed was that students outperform their traditional counterparts in pretty much every realm. So academically, like your standardized testing, but also when it comes to social and emotional well-being, artistically, all sorts of different kinds of things. It's a pretty extensive study. And we can't miss the fact that these students were highly privileged. It's something that's part of that could potentially alter the findings because the schools that could do that were mostly more well off kids. That doesn't mean though that we couldn't ensure that for all of our schools.

Speaker 5 And then the cold war came about and of course, everybody referred it back to more, we have to get the rigor and the science and that blah blah blah. We have to and and we kinda disbanded the idea, but the information that's out there is always going to be skewed. And so, yeah, the more information that can get out there, the more and I don't know how many people I've talked to in education who don't know about the eight year study. And I've yet to hear somebody say it was a terrible study for this reason or that it failed, all I've heard is it did show this one thing. People say explicit learning is shown to work. I have evidence of it. Okay. Under what condition and what did it work for? Show me the evidence that it works without using a score increase on either a grade or a standardized test. Well, that's not there. So what is it working for? Don't, these stereotypes that are out there. People and and people love to make fun. Oh, lack of rigor. Oh, we're going to go around and sing Kumbaya like you said. We need more people showing that that's not the case. And when kids set their goals and they have a mind to do, they'll work their tails off for it. Never seen the opposite to be true. I have seen kids do amazing things and and I've seen a lot of athletes. I mean, look at athletes who choose to play a certain sport. They'll kill themselves to be good at that sport. And and any other hobby or or game or activity. Kids who wanna put be great guitarists, man, they go to the store and they start banging away on that guitar over and over. I'm glad no one told Dave Grohl to go back to school and start doing that homework and get really good. Glad his mom let him tour to Europe with a band at 17 so he could continue playing because I kinda like some of the music Dave Grohl has put out. And I benefit greatly from his mom's open mindedness to to the path he should have taken. And never not everybody's gonna be that, but we don't know where everybody's gonna head. I find that I've read most of the stuff the other camp has read. They haven't necessarily read the stuff I've read. And I don't mean to get on my high horse or sound braggy right now, but if that's true, why don't we all read all the same stuff and see what happens?

Speaker 6 I always believe strongly that every child and every human has gifts and strengths that really place them in a valuable role in society. We all have our different strengths and weaknesses and and and a place where where we're needed within society.

Speaker 1 Anne Connolly is a special ed and inclusion specialist in Ontario who has been teaching for twenty years embracing a progressive mentality.

Speaker 6 And I guess my own experience really kinda deepened when as a mom, I was faced with the disappointing reality that this progressive, inclusive, positive approach was not encouraged or embraced by all teachers or classrooms or schools. When my first child, my daughter, who was a very naturally very bright, funny, curious, articulate child started school, I was shocked and saddened that she didn't like school at all. Her kindergarten experience was not particularly welcoming or engaging. The school that she attended, the primary school she attended here in Ontario was a very highly rated school. It performed very well on our standardized EQAO test, but it quite literally completely failed my daughter and other kids as well in terms of engagement, social skills, inclusion, and her mental health and her overall well-being were quite honestly damaged at that school. She was bullied. She was not supported. She was made to feel stupid. She was humiliated, and ultimately, you know, not supported by the adults in the building for all the way from the teachers to the principal. And me as a teacher, I kind of knew how to try to get in there to get that support for her, but we were not successful. And we witnessed firsthand how detrimental such an unsupportive negative school environment could be, how detrimental it can be on a child. And she had everything else going for her, you know. This is a child who came from a great family, a great home life, you know, socioeconomic status. She she was at an advantage, at a privilege from the beginning, and it just destroyed her. At the time, it really broke her heart, but as I've healed my heart, I've become stronger in my own commitment to positive progressive education. And like I said, it was always there, but it just made me realize that, wow, it really isn't everywhere. And it needs to be. Like, it's so critical for and I love how you guys call it the human restoration project. Like, there's there's no other way to say it. When you were talking about positive progressive practices, can you go into more detail about what those are? Going from strengths, giving the kids choice, giving the kids voice, letting them have a say in the classroom environment, letting them not everyone does well sitting at a desk. So, again, flexible seating. Like, these are just some of the the things. Technology these days, assistive technology is fantastic for so many kids. I mean, it's a universal design for learning in the sense of it's not just good for kids who have learning disabilities, it's great for all kids. And these are the kinds of things that we have to just, I guess, I think maybe teachers sometimes are afraid to take risks and to, I guess, think outside the box. And so it's very, you know, it seems easier to just check off the curriculum and follow that very safe plan. But I don't know, I find it actually easier easier to go with the kids, let them, you know, and they when we give them that kind of autonomy or that kind of power, I just I don't love the word power, but that kind of independence, they thrive. They will take it and they will run with it and the things you see are just, you know, beyond your expectations. When we know how we wanna try how to try and bring out the best in them, but we have to trust them that maybe they know. And they know their limits, and they know their strengths and their weaknesses. And and, of course, you know, as educators, we wanna we wanna push them beyond their limits and we want them to reach their potential. But I honestly think when you've got a kid in the zone and engaged and interested, they push their own limits. It's not external. It's totally intrinsic motivation

Speaker 1 at its in its truest form. And it seems like those notions are heavily reflected in what the best classrooms are doing throughout the country. Ironically, most of the time, the teacher seems to get in the way and really just needs to take that risk, as you said, and letting kids control much of what happens in a practical authentic way. You know, we could drastically change classrooms tomorrow if we just asked, what do you want to do? How does all this translate then into inclusion and special education? I'm a SERC teacher, s e r c.

Speaker 6 I have a special education resource classroom, which I love because I still have my own group of kids. I can create that classroom that great classroom community, classroom vibe, really get to know my students. And but I only have them for 50% of the day. So they are included. They are absolutely integrated into the other classes. They come to me for 50% of the day for language and math only. I find that kind of a lot of that project based learning and a lot of those other really great pedagogical models, Those worked so well in like science and social studies and history and geography. In language and math, do have to do it. It's a little bit different in there. I teach primary, so I teach the younger ones. So we're kind of starting from the beginning. But I guess, in terms of, for example, time, we're starting to look at time on an analog clock, which nobody really uses anymore. But as we were talking, as I was showing it, the kids were watching videos about it, we were talking about it, we made they made their own clocks. Just paper plate clock, nothing fancy, but we kind of realized the whole purpose of time and the idea that it's cyclical and that it goes around. It was through exploring that kind of that model, working with the round paper plates, making the little hands go around, like, all that physical movement, the the creating it themselves, making their own colors, you know, noticing that that there's big numbers that count the hours. There's the little numbers that count the minutes. And, you know, I have a little boy. He's in grade two. He's language impaired, and he's been struggling a lot. But once he realized the connection between, like, the hours and the minutes, he was able to tell time to the quarter of an hour to fifteen minutes. And that's not even part of his grade two curriculum. Never mind the fact that he's on an IEP, and, you know, it's beyond what he should be doing. So I guess when I think about it now I do work it does work its way into my class but I definitely as a classroom teacher a regular classroom teacher kind of I guess maybe more progressive type of teaching and the student choice and voice, that that definitely came more integrated with science and social studies. But I guess now that I'm thinking about it, I do do it in math almost naturally without even thinking about it. You know what I mean? It's almost not I didn't think it was that type, but it really is.

Speaker 1 Right. Right. And and in the same vein, progressive education isn't necessarily that we have to do experiential learning or we have to do a certain type of education. It's that as you said, we're providing students with the outlet and voice to take control of that education and then offering those experiences as a potential outcome. It's not all or nothing. You can have direct instruction as long as the students are consentful towards actually accepting that direct. I talk to kids all the time that want that experience, and that's perfectly fine. It's not about an all or nothing thing. We have circumstances. Like, for example, at a special education facility in a primary school where we wanna assist young people in reading basic math, you know, it makes sense sometimes. And I found too that for older kids, high schoolers, our more advanced topics are actually brought to life by students doing more experiential learning and doing something that's a little bit more experimental, probably because it's very much a propose your own way of learning type thing. So students on IEP or five or four, it's naturally differentiating. It really is

Speaker 6 universal design for learning, like UDL in my special education training. You know, that's something obviously we learn about differentiated instruction and universal design for learning. Like, you you can't go wrong. You're gonna you're gonna allow the the academically inclined students to succeed and do well, and you're opening a door of, you know, possibilities and entry points and just

Speaker 1 different ways for those those kind of different learners to think outside of the box and to succeed outside of the box. Based off your experiences of being a mother and elementary educator, what recommendations do you offer teachers who want to engage a class which is inclusive?

Speaker 6 Getting to know them, like establishing a relationship, getting to know their talents, their passions, their fears, what they're really good at. As soon as you know what makes them tick, then you use that and you weave it any way you can into whatever curriculum you're trying to teach or whatever subject you're trying to teach. So one of my little fellows I know he's very artistic and he's really good at art. So when it came to making his clock, he got to decorate it and add color, whereas the other ones, some of the other ones who wouldn't be as artistic, they didn't go in that direction. So it gives them kind of a sense of ownership and pride and a reason to be intrinsically motivated to really want to do this work. Because a lot of times with some of these kids, it's I mean, some of the some of the stuff we have to teach them is so to them, it's so random. It's so unimportant. And we just we've got to find a way to hook them and to get them interested and to show them why it's relevant or why it's valuable or and and, you know, oftentimes, we do that by just finding something they like. You know, I had this little little boy who loved Batman. So wherever I could put fit Batman in, Batman was there. Just to, again, just to keep them engaged. Allowing the kids giving them tools, a variety of tools, a variety of strategies to kind of support them. So for example, again, so in math, we've spent a lot of time kind of exploring different tools, for example, hundreds charts and number lines, which are really, really great for almost any type of math. Once you've kind of introduced it to them, given the kids a bunch of different experiences, exploring them in different ways, creating them, dissecting them, kind of deconstructing them, constructing them, working with them in different ways, then the students are able to kind of say, you know what, prefer, I like working with this. This is going to help me. And then giving them choice again, giving them choice, letting them see what works for them, what makes sense to them. We want to expose them and share different options of tools and strategies that will help them, but ultimately they need to make the choice of what's going to work for them. And giving them that responsibility and that independence even for a grade two student, even for a little one. I I love the point you bring up surrounding elementary students.

Speaker 1 I don't think we believe in them enough. We certainly say we do, but people assume that things like expositions of learning, celebrations when students present at the end of the year is too much for younger kids, but kids know what they're doing. They might need a little nudge towards something sometimes, but it isn't a uniform learning process for every seven year old. We can do a lot of different things. In the same line of thought, what are your concerns then for inclusive practice in particular? People some sometimes teachers, educators, parents,

Speaker 6 administrators, we kind of think that just by putting a bunch of kids in a class together, that's inclusion. And it couldn't be further from the truth because putting a bunch of different kids with different strengths, different weaknesses, different issues, I guess, in a room, different personalities, they need coaching and modeling and they need constant, I don't want to say supervision, but instruction or coaching, maybe coaching is a better word, and how to relate to one another. Because inclusion is not a physical thing. Inclusion is not putting them in a room together and there we have it. It's a relationship. It's a deep connection to feel included and I think that is one of the biggest scariest things is that teachers don't understand that putting them in the room together is one thing but we have to teach them, coach them, get to model how to respect one another, how to all even if we don't like each other, we still have to find a way to get along. I know, for example, in September, a lot of classes, classrooms, teachers, they're establishing you know classroom rules or classroom expectations. Things can't just be talked about in September and written on a chart and stuck on the wall. It has to be lived and experienced and the kids have to breathe it. You have to talk about it all the time and integrate it show it explicitly and deliberately how you know, well the way you just said that to her that wasn't very respectful. Is there another way you could phrase it? Or you know you're having a difficulty with that student. How can you solve that problem and coaching them through those things? Because yeah, I think the biggest mistake we make is that we don't know how to teach inclusion. We don't know how to really make it happen and that's scary because as soon as the teachers aren't looking, that's when the bullying happens. That's when the kids will say or do something and especially I'm just thinking I know my daughter's experience and lots of other kids that I teach kids with LDs, you know dyslexia who have terrible spelling. I mean all day long those kids are writing expected to write all day long they're making spelling errors and all day long the other kids are just giving them a look or making a comment or that's not how you spell this or that's not how you spell that. And it cuts them to the core. And if you would really if you really are able to teach the whole idea of respect and appreciation and the fact that we all have different talents, we all have strengths, we all have weaknesses. You might be a great speller in the class, you may struggle with spelling, but guess what? He's going to be able to help you with art or with math or music or something like that. That's what they need. And I don't mean to to, I guess, get down on teachers because, yeah, the way the system is structured, it's really hard for teachers to do all that they need and want to do. So, it's not individual teachers, individual schools, although in some cases it is. But overall, the system is just not designed to allow us to do our jobs to the best with, I guess, the right priorities in mind. And yeah, it's standardized testing and all this kind of strict rigid curriculum. Doesn't help. Yeah, and then on the other side of that is these kids who are struggling for so many different reasons. I mean, it doesn't really matter if it's an over diagnosis or an under diagnosis. The bottom line is these kids are struggling. They're struggling with whether it's the type of classroom environment they're in or whether it's something within their own path, their own mental health, their own trauma. Know there's a lot of stress and anxiety in the world all around and rubs off on kids. That's a whole other area exploration that I'm kind of delving into into the self reg world, self regulation and kind of healing that part of kids and adults. But yeah, parents and as a parent of a kid who had an LDE ADHD who struggled a lot, it's really hard for parents too because there's so much shame and there's so much blame and there's so much that we feel responsible for. And sometimes we have to just acknowledge that there's a lot out of our control. You know, we feel like we need to be in control of everything and we're not. I mean but again, I think it all comes back to the idea that we all kind of have our strengths and our weaknesses and we all just need to focus on on the priorities and and and everything will fall into place, I think.

Speaker 1 Hey. Thanks again for listening in to Things Fall Apart here at the Human Restoration Project. If you enjoy what you're listening to so far, be sure to check us out on our Patreon, which you can access at humanrestorationproject.org. If you support us on Patreon, we'll give you all of our blog postings from all of our contributors in an electronic magazine every couple months. That way it's a little bit easier to keep up on and read and learn a lot about what we're talking about and a lot of things that are backed by solid foundational research. Thank you. One thing that I wonder through all this is are we pushing for something that some people really don't like? They consider progressive ed counter to the goals of education or the good life, and that adds a lot of stress. Not only are teachers underpaid, undervalued, and often misrepresented, they now have the added burden of feeling like they're doing something wrong. As in it feels like bad teaching to make some of these transitions as we're going against really what we might have learned in college or maybe we saw in a quote unquote good classroom growing up. Someone working really hard to change that narrative and help teachers cope is Gamal Sharif, who has taught across middle and high schools for the last twenty years, serving as a fellow with the US Department of Education and is now an ambassador for the UN Sustainable Goals Project. He thinks it's time to develop the hashtag sustainable teacher.

Speaker 7 We really wanna take care of our kids. We wanna be our kids we want our kids to be engaged. A lot of us, I I assume, have enjoyed school or were good at school in in the past. So there's this achievement orientation that is part of what we bring to the classroom. Not a bad thing. However, part of that really or has the potential to impinge upon our our energy for our kids and for ourself. So the first thing about the sustainable teacher is one, self care. And I think that's something that teachers need to be more explicit about. Sometimes I wonder if we are a little bit shy about saying that we have our own needs or saying no to colleagues or administrators. That's where I would start the conversation with the sustainable teachers, learning to take care of the self so that you have more for your students and and colleagues. Right, right. This overwhelming stress reminds me of Bell Hooks who talks about in Teaching to Transgress

Speaker 1 that concept of educators trying progressive teaching practices. And she explains that, you know, students weren't sitting straight up anymore and they weren't responding in that trained fashion we taught them to do. And maybe they were a little bit more rebellious, which makes sense because it's the first time maybe that they ever had more freedom. And then the teacher quickly doubles down on traditional practice because they became nervous because they felt like they were losing that control of the quote unquote good classroom. Well, I in my on my worst days, I revert to get it done kind of mode,

Speaker 7 which is not good for me or for my students. So it is I think you're right about this, double consciousness part of the teacher experience, because on one hand, we're put on a pedestal, and on the other hand, we're sort of like disrespected and told we are told, do what you have to be do what you're told. So it really does not, you know, and all those voices are coming at us, telling us different things about who we are, our value in the classroom. And parents have their own stories about teachers, kids have their own stories. And I guess coming back to the sustainable teacher, we have our own stories that we tell ourselves as well. So the quality of our self talk has to be something that we look at to make sure that we are not deluding ourselves and that we are having messages about

Speaker 1 what we think is valuable. As we progressed in our conversation, Gamal and I spoke about what progressive ed actually is. I think most people listening in have a general consensus, but in the same way that we don't necessarily all agree on what a good life is, there's differences in what someone means by progressive ed. Those voices, in addition to all the others from the other side or the traditional side if you will, can be overwhelming. Well you know, it's weird because there's

Speaker 7 so many different voices about that. There are people who are advocates of social justice, who think that we need high stakes standardized tests to hold teachers accountable to make sure that there is racial and economic equity. And I don't, I just don't, I don't get that argument. Because it seems to me that what we want to do within education in general, and within progressive education in particular, is to foster individual liberty, and a child's love of learning. If they're not loving learning, then we have work to do as educators, as stewards of their learning. But then again, over in Echotopia, sorry, Echotopia, there's this recent Twitter back and forth about teachers having these cooperative meetings with students and saying, based on your needs, let's design a plan of study. And so many people that I have respected in the progressive education circles are saying that it's just rubbish, that it's a terrible framework. And there was something about the way it was written that kind of got on my nerves too. All this, there's like this cognitive dissonance about what we experience in our schools. I think there are a couple of good books that have helped me reframe and focus on developing my own narrative, but also not being like independent from whatever else is going on around me. It's important to acknowledge that there are stressed out administrators who are worrying about the standardized test scores. And colleagues who have those classes who are being affected in some kind of way. Yeah. It makes sense that we need to instill a love of learning before anything else. That intrinsic motivation is sort of the entire point.

Speaker 1 I think there's a lot of room for productive debate within the education community, but the harder question for me has always been, how do we even start this conversation with someone who's not even willing to consider it? Yeah, that's a good question.

Speaker 7 I think one one strategy is to have teachers take more stewardship of professional development. And I think that means, in part, identifying institutional goals. There's something that a principal or a superintendent understands about a system that is just hers because of her perspective, her viewpoint. So what are the values or what are the go to goals for an institution? We need to marry those with what we think teachers need, and what we know about what students need. So professional development in professional learning communities, as one model, is a way to have teachers experience grade less learning as they identify opportunities or problems, as they work together over time, months or weeks, and then, you know, coming together to present and share what they've learned for the value of learning, for the value of the collaboration, and for the value of enriching the school learning environment. No grades needed. But when they experience their own stewardship of their own learning, they are in a position to transfer that experience to their classmates. But unless it's part of the school wide culture,

Speaker 1 it's a really challenging position to be in. I think a lot of it too is just a misunderstanding of what progressive education is. We were talking earlier about the characterization of progressive ed being completely hands off and that's not really true. It could be depending on the learners. We could definitely have multiple different options, but we're still mentors and coaches. You know, I don't scream at kids, I don't take away their cell phones, nothing like that. But I certainly encourage kids to focus and prompt them to meet the goals that they're setting for themselves.

Speaker 7 I also tell my kids, if you have your cell phone out, you should be using it for research or to learn something during this activity. So either A, you're by yourself doing your own research, pursuing your own questions, or B, you're with a small team planning and reviewing your research, or you're doing some other kind of learning. But I mean, don't even mind, you know, those quick study breaks when the kids are just playing on their little games like jewels or gems or whatever it is. Those little five minute breaks or three minute breaks are okay. I prefer maybe we do some more mindfulness. But yeah, people see that as lack of discipline. And I don't think it's But it's not lack of caring. And actually, there is a form of discipline in there, because helping it's children arrive in a place where they can take care of themselves and take care of their classmates, if they have that self discipline to not be off task or, which is a loaded word, or just to be wasting time. That is something that a lot of them are uncomfortable with. And I think that we I can get more assertive about creating those spaces for students to make choices. I also think that we should look at the long term, because I do have high school kids over months or over four years. I think I've seen kids grow in that direction, and when they increasingly become more comfortable. One question I have though is, when you exist in a school that has a lot of teachers who are tired or fed up or burnt out or defaulting to

Speaker 1 command and control. Plus having the backing of a progressively minded leader like a principal, that's huge. Someone has to hold everything together or else you have to band together and basically rebel against your your superior.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I think it's really good to have administrators who are, understand what you're seeing and setting up opportunities to succeed across the school for that kind of thinking. And you know, a lot of people, the counter to progressive education for me has been this structured, data driven, concrete, procedural, teacher proof way of doing school. Whereas the possibilities with progressive education are endless. And I think that might be a little bit worrisome to administrators or colleagues, to teachers, because if you have this different value framework, what's the pathway to get kids to want to learn? There's if you have 30 kids in your classroom, God forbid, if you have 20 kids in your classroom, there's probably 20 ways to get kids to want to learn. And that could be kind of challenging for people or worrisome.

Speaker 1 Right. So as progressive teachers that are facing all these different voices including their own cognitive dissonance of what's best for kids, something that we're always thinking and worrying about, How do we then avoid burnout?

Speaker 7 Well, I, you know, and going to work every day in that setting, again with that cognitive dissonance, knowing what needs to happen and seeing that there's not capacity, is a tough burden to carry. So one of the things that I've done to avoid burnout is take lots of naps, get to bed on time. I read a really good book by Barbara Laraby called Cultivating Teacher Renewal, which is a terrific guide about the habit of positive thinking without hiding your head in the sand. But I also have discovered the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for transforming curriculum, instruction, assessment and policy. These are, sustainable development is much more of a social and economic thing. For me in education, I'm like, what else are we working on? So all, like, no matter what happens in society, no matter what kids are experiencing, when they walk into a school, it should be a beautiful place with clean water. It should also have opportunity for kids to understand how to conserve energy, and and model that and practice that, because looking at the planet, I think we have a, you know, a little window here. There has to be a commitment to, like, playgrounds and and open space where kids can just be. And I'm not just talking for little kids, I'm talking big kids, you know? They need to have this, like, access to nature. So every school should have a green band, a little wildlife habitat, convert the parking lot, please, into a green space that kids can understand and be part of nature. I think it's good for their brains. And I think that advisory is a very concrete thing within the school that needs to be a that can be a mechanism, a strategy, a scheduling opportunity to have the critical conversations where it's one to 15 or one to 20 a couple times a week, not just for ten minutes to get your your trans pass for the bus, but to actually have longer classes with a, like, low low low bar grading, like one or two assignments a quarter. I'm getting to the nitty gritty here, but I just it's like it's like the value of advisory is a way to help foster social emotional learning. I think there needs to be a real commitment to that. And when kids when kids experience it and teachers experience, it it transforms the school.

Speaker 1 In conclusion, whose role is it then to decide what kids learn and what will lead them on a path to the good life? I think based on the arguments laid out here that we should just listen, learn, and do whatever the individual decides. That might seem kind of lack adaisical or not very conclusive, but we don't really spend enough time listening and learning from students nor do we really give them that much of a voice. We need children not only involved in planning our classrooms, they should be involved in meetings and school planning. They should be constantly sharing what matters to them. I feel like I don't let students share enough in my class about what they wanna do. We might start off with it. We might do halfway points, but it has to be a constant process. And what they think, it might matter in the future, it might not. But the main thing is that it matters to them right now. We're meeting students where they're at. And there's certainly a place for teachers to implement their own expert opinions on what a good life is. There has to be some kind of voice of a teacher, but it's not a top down policy or standardized movement. It's going to matter to the local community. It's gonna matter to an extent their personality and their background, and that's all absolutely fine. There's an art to teaching. We are experts. We have our own purpose. But we have to kinda push for trust with our students in order to make those decisions. I can pump in, you know, twenty, thirty, maybe even 40 of what I think is important to students if they trust me and they know that I'm doing what I believe is best for them, while still making sure that again, we're giving up the majority of our time to serving their needs. There's practically no way to figure out what the future's gonna hold, but the best we can do is give them the reins. I hope you enjoyed listening in today. You can find a bunch of helpful links and background information in our show notes. Also, be sure to check us out on our website at humanrestorationproject.org. And if you like our content, consider supporting us on Patreon. Let's continue to restore humanity to education.