Connecting Through Transferable Learning

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to episode 88 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project. My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio. Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Dylan Wentz, Lisa Viber, and Margaret Clifton. Thank you for your ongoing support. You can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. In today's conversation, we're joined by Trevor Alea, an English teacher in Wilton, Connecticut, Kayla Duncan, a professional instruction coach from Cumming, Georgia, and Julie Stern, author of Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding and Many More, and Workshop Leader of Making Sense of Learning Transfer. Together, along with Krista Ferrero, a history teacher from Braintree, Massachusetts, they have written Learning that Transfers, Designing Curriculum for a Changing World, releasing in April 2021. This work connects interdisciplinary learning, centers students in instructional design, and offers educators tools to plan effectively. In our conversation together, we talk about what it means to transfer learning, how this differs from traditional brain science curriculum planning, and how we can push for social justice through interdisciplinary aligned learning.

Speaker 2 Let's just simply start off with just an overview of what you're currently doing. How do you wanna change things up? How does it differ from what's out there? Just kinda provide an introduction to yourself and what you're doing. Okay. So, essentially, our goal with Learn That Transfer is to help

Speaker 3 students be able to construct and build conceptual understanding that they can use to transfer to future situations. So, typically, when you think about curriculum, you hear that word, you think about kids memorizing facts that are organized around topics. So, you know, their ability to know a bunch of things to treat them like a sort of empty vessel that we dump facts into. Even after doing that, that knowledge can't be used in any other context other than whatever the next test is. So what we suggest is to consider how you can take knowledge and skills and organize them around broader concepts. Then you put students into situations where they have to try to figure out how those concepts connect and interact with one another, and then they can take that understanding which is broader and deeper and apply it to future situations. So what that does is it allows students to, a, better leverage their prior knowledge because we're not coming in and saying, today, we are learning about this battle in World War two, which is completely divorced and devoid from anything that they've done previously. You might be talking about things like sovereignty and power. So these are things that throughout their daily life, they may not actively think about and realize that it connects to what's happening in the classroom, but it does. And then what that kind of extends from that is this idea of we want students to build a culture of transfer, which is where they're always sort of thinking about what are the patterns or structures that sort of undergird things that are happening in their life, things that are happening on the news, things that are happening, with the text and context that they interact with every day. So, that's kind of like the the impetus and focus of the work is to have students develop conceptual understanding so they can recognize these, patterns and structures that, sort of undergird everything that happens in the world. And we developed, kind of like a simple mental model, which is acquire, connect, and transfer. And what that does is students acquire understanding of concepts. They connect them in relationship, and then they have to transfer that understanding to future context. So it's just sort of, like, the simple mental model that we use to frame and phrase what students do. And the goal is really to help them understand and take on those patterns and then really take ownership and go into context that are self selected or that they find interesting or engaging or, are around the topic they're passionate about and use that conceptual understanding to make sense and make meaning of those contexts that have personal relevance to them. It seems like a pretty high level idea,

Speaker 2 like, when you're kinda coming in with it out of thin air.

Speaker 4 What brought you all to get to this point? That's such a great question. What brought us to get to this point? So, well, I I am the one of who who sort of brought everybody together on this on this new book and on this new team. And Christopher Ayo, our other coauthor who's not on this podcast, and I have known each other for about fifteen years. And we were a curriculum team at a charter school that was designed to get kids to be sort of active participants in society. And they you know, whoever wrote the charter for that school said, you know, we want all subject areas to, like, get kids to be empowered. We want all subject areas to contribute to students' understanding of public policy. It was a charter school for public policy. And so I had to work with the PE teacher, the math teacher, the health teacher, everybody to incorporate this empowerment lens into their curriculum. And that was it was in some cases, it was like beating my head against the wall. And so I think that experience, almost like from adversity, we we sort of figured it out. I think going through that and finding the work of Lynn Erickson, who was a mentor of mine for many years, and our first Chris and I's first two books are part of Lynn Erickson's concept based series, And sort of building on the work of understanding by design, Wiggins and McTighe, most people know what that is, and sort of thinking about the enduring understandings. What do we want kids to ultimately remember and be able to understand once they leave our classrooms, building on that into concept based and then sort of furthering our own thinking about how fast the world is changing. And, really, what do we know about research that's gonna help our kids to make sense of complexity, to be prepared you know, what we keep saying is, look. Our ultimate goal is for kids to figure out a situation when we're not there and for them to use what we taught them to figure out this situation when we're not there. And so we sort of started from, like, okay. If that's the goal, what do we know about about cognitive science? What do we know about learning? What do we know about humanity? What do we know about all the things that we know about? What are the things that we need to know more about? So we did just incredible amounts of research among the four of us, and that's how we came to this conclusion. And one quick example of that I love that Trevor used the World War two example because one thing that I I keep saying is, look. What's the goal? Is the goal for kids to remember every single battle of World War two and every single leader of each country that was involved, for instance, or the dates of each of these battles? Or is the goal for students to use their understanding of World War two to try and prevent another major global international conflict, then we've got some tools for you. And so, you know, that's really what we're trying to do. And what we realized in this journey, one of the things that was kicking around in our brains that it was nice to work on this intensely with this amazing team is that it's concepts and their connections that can that basically sort of link our prior experiences to new situations. And so if we can make that explicit to students, then we are a we can't guarantee it, of course, but we have a better chance of preparing them to recognize a new situation and how their prior knowledge applies.

Speaker 5 I was going to add to that the the bit about knowing all the stuff from a bunch of different disciplines. I think we agree that we need disciplinary knowledge across. We don't need to specialize in just one area, but rather than memorization of all the details and facts, like Julie was saying, we're endorsing or really pushing for that deep understanding of concepts so that way they can see systems, power, sovereignty, and, well, how does this look in math, or how does this look in a social studies type context? So it's really using those examples and our disciplinary knowledge to unlock situations where the it's integrated together versus memorizing for the sake of memorizing.

Speaker 2 Right. Right. And I I think that will be a really good segue into the the next stage of this podcast, if you will. I've kinda dividing it up between here's what it is, here's how it's different than what's out there, and then here's how we apply it to active scenarios. And I think that the first thing a lot of think people will think when they hear this is the cognitive science movement as a way to redesign learning spaces. And there's a lot of very questionable practices around cognitive load theory, evidence based learning behavior management, etcetera, etcetera. I'll go through a few of these, and you kind of tell me how it's different because it it obviously is. The first one that comes up all the time is is Hirsch. Right? So Hirsch's work around, like, core knowledge. And that basically, if we know a bunch of different stuff, then we can recall that that stuff quicker, and therefore, it'll be easier for us to be competent about other things because we know so much stuff. How is this different than that philosophy?

Speaker 4 Well, I think the important thing here is that there is we talk a lot about false dichotomies. In fact, I don't know if you know. Trevor and I have a podcast, and we we sort of keep coming back to this on our podcast. We keep realizing, oh, that there's another sort of false dichotomy. And I think one of the things that is debated is whether or not it's knowledge or sort of transferable critical thinking or problem solving types of ideas, and there's this fight between one or the other. And I suppose my answer would be, well, you can't have one without the other. So, you know, there's some there's some valid points to to I wouldn't say necessarily Edie Hirsch, but some of the other people who say, you know, teaching content is teaching reading, for instance, that kids can't unlock a new text if they only know how to phonetically decode. They need to have sort of background knowledge and and things like that, and they need to know how to decode. Right? So I feel like a lot of times these types of debates are sort of ignore the nuance the interplay between knowledge and sort of conceptual understanding. And so we're not arguing that only so you can't talk about sovereignty unless you give examples. And so for us, like, step one, a big shift in my practice has been, instead of first, I'm gonna teach you all these facts, and then I'm gonna get to this cool thing called concepts. Now I start with the concept via illustrative examples of the concept. And so if I'm gonna be teaching so I sort of think, okay. If the standards tell me I need to teach World War two, I think what are at the what's at the core of that conflict, sovereignty, authority, alliances is a huge one there. And so I say to my students, okay. And then I start thinking, what do my students know about alliances? What do my students know about authority? They know a lot about alliances and authority in their own lives that have nothing to do with nations and international relationships, but we sort of start there. And I think that's that's kind of the difference is is we're not saying you must know all these dates and battles in order to understand World War two. However, we're also not saying those dates and battles are completely irrelevant. For instance, I was having this conversation with my husband who's a US diplomat, so we get to talk to all kinds of interesting social studies content all the time. And he says, you know, what could be interesting is seeing, like, how long it took Germany to take certain steps for students to sort of think looking at a modern situation, looking at where we are in that situation and sort of seeing, okay. It took Germany two years to make these moves. That might be, like, a a decent benchmark. So that's an an example of where the facts would inform students ability to apply that learning to a new situation. So you you to me, you can't have facts and concepts

Speaker 3 alone. You need both. I think that the other thing is those that knowledge, those facts, and even to some degree, those concepts are tools for other things. And I think that when you look at the way that at least the discourse around a lot of the cognitive science that you see at least on, like, edgy Twitter. The goal is to have kids expand their, fact base so they can reach back into their long term memory, pull something out, put down an answer on a test. And it's sort of, like, maximizing the utility of that time to ensure that they can memorize the most stuff. For us, you gotta know stuff, and there is a purpose in understanding and having automaticity. But why? What is the purpose of that knowledge? How is it used? How is it useful? What is its function and purpose and role in your life? And how can you use it to be a more, active and engaged citizen? How can you use it to make sense of your life? How can you use it to make and construct meaning, alongside others in your community? And I think that that is the big difference. And for us, it's it's it's the the conversation, the framing, the focus, the discourse around knowledge. That's the issue when it comes to a lot of the way that cognitive science is talked about, but not necessarily the research itself. And there's another piece to it, which is a lot of the research that we sort of base our stuff on is around, like, analogical thinking. So, basically, our brains are hardwired to recognize patterns. When we see something new, we think about, oh, how does this look like this other thing that I know? And that's sort of how we build schema. That's how we kind of make sense of things. And the goal for that isn't just to have students be able to answer the most test questions. The goal for that is to equip students with the ability to encounter a new complex situation, and that could be I've had my students talk about how they use understanding for my class to navigate coming up with a new cheer routine because they had a really authoritarian coach, and they were trying to to work with her. I've had students talk about how they were watching a play with their parents, and they were able to sort of connect the dots and see the deeper, themes, and they had a beautiful conversation with their parents about it. And the goal is to have that knowledge belong to the students. They construct it themselves, and they use it themselves, in in interesting and powerful ways. So I think that it's really about thinking how do we organize the way that instruction is, delivered to students, and then how can we give them opportunities to use it for meaningful purposes? That it's again, it's not just the test. We say the that memorization, the automaticity is the is the floor. It's not the ceiling. And when we approach it that way, the learning that students engage in, it's not it it's well, it's not just about engagement. It's about, investment. And that's something that I really try to focus on with my students is I I don't want to engage them with with kitschy, you know, like, phrases or sayings or pop culture. I want them to be invested in their learning and see, like, wow. This these these conversations we're having in class are relevant to me, my life, my friends, my family, and my community. And that is, I think, the the biggest difference is how that knowledge and understanding is used. So the goal, especially for us, and this is one of the things that we're really advocating for by focusing on transfer, is the goal isn't to have students understand concepts. The goal is to have students use conceptual understanding to make sense of new situations. So that way, the learning that they engage in has a function

Speaker 5 outside of just whatever the next assessment is. Yeah. I would say that a big shift is the that partnership, versus the student teacher kind of they had their separate roles. They're more partners in the classroom, and it's really about students. We've we've talked about accessing their prior knowledge, but leaning into their strengths also and thinking about what are they interested in and what are their passions. And so in the classroom, we're facilitating and designing these experiences where they're exploring different concepts that maybe are related to the standards, but also connect to these other ideas that go beyond just that core knowledge. And there's tons of conversation. There there has to be that community aspect, kind of like what Julie was saying, where students are free to share opinions even if they're diverse perspectives. They learn how to have those conversations with each other versus only agreeing with what the teacher said or going along with what each other said because that's what's the nice thing to do. And so really facilitating those conversations, exploring together, and then finding ways, like Julie said, for us to transfer this to some crazy situation. Like, it's a community kind of a community event, and then students are able to look at their individual passions and interests and transfer and apply, in creative and unique ways because we've set that culture of lean into your strengths, really look for those connections, take risks, and then see see what can happen. If it doesn't work, then you have your your peers to go back to and try again. There there's a lot there. I'm gonna attempt to synthesize

Speaker 2 my my thoughts here. So first off, I like the idea of and you're highly alluding to this. You're you're basically instead of starting with the baseline knowledge being that students know nothing, they need to know what's heavily critiqued as this this very, like, white centric curriculum, like middle class curriculum. And instead, we're starting with here's what the students know, and here's how those ideas can be then applied to some stuff that the teacher thinks is important, some stuff that the student thinks that's important, and blending that all together. The main issue I take with the the core knowledge curriculum is that it implies that or doesn't just imply. I mean, Hersch has a a book list of, books that he deems important that you have to read. And they're all, like, old school classical ed. If I don't read the giver, somehow I'm ill prepared for life, and I won't be able to recall information. The big issue there for me isn't the idea that you have kids read the giver, which is kinda boring, but whatever. The big issue is is that from, like, a theoretical standpoint as a teacher, I'm assuming that everyone in the room is dumb and they don't know anything. And that's going to extend how I treat them and and the power dynamics. I mean, there's a innate connection between cognitive load theory and, like, behaviorism. Right? The like, the teach like a champion style teaching where you have to control everyone in the rooms. They learn their their rope based knowledge. They have to get their sit and get in order to pass those tests. Whereas what you're describing is a lot different. What would a classroom look like that embraces these principles? How would it be different than, like, the more test based approach? Mhmm. Well, we talk a lot about thinking classrooms that, you know, found foundationally,

Speaker 4 it has to be about intellectual growth. It has to be a community. It has to be a place where everyone is valued, where students' prior knowledge and experiences are valued. So sort of before we even get into the actual pedagogy, we talk a lot about what is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the student? And it's really shifting, you know, the that that comes a lot from a lot of our consulting. So Kayla and I I do I I'm a full time consultant. I work with schools all over the world, and Kayla is a full time instructional coach for a large school district. How many campuses do you work with, Kayla, and how many teachers' grade levels? I mean, it's a huge school district. And so what we realized is like, oh gosh. Snap. If you're still using assessments to try to motivate your kids to pay attention, this is not gonna work. If you still think you have to know everything that the that the students need to know, this is probably not gonna work. So we kinda started with, like the second chapter of our book is shifts key shifts that need to be made. And so the vast majority of the teachers that we work with know you know, they they they fundamentally agree. Like, the teacher is no longer the sage on the stage. The teacher is a facilitator of learning, a designer of powerful learning experiences, a curator of everything that's out there, to put in front of students. You know, that sort of shift is kind of like step one before we even start talking about what a classroom looks like. And so I think, you know, we love visible thinking strategies, things where we're we're we're have a bit of a problem with sticky notes. Our our budget for sticky notes and and whiteboarding and things like that is is out the window. But, you know, we really want to get students thinking out into the world and and have lots of of deep conversations among the students. And so I think that's that's what a a classroom looks like. Now, ideally, we're getting to a it depends. It depends on where the schools the school is and where they might start. So they might start with, okay. If I'm teaching World War two, I'm gonna I'm gonna consider sovereignty and things of that nature. At the same time, the possibilities are so immense. For instance, there's a book that that Trevor got us got us reading called the Medici effect, and, you know, that talks that book talks about how concepts and their connections really spawn world changing innovation. And one of the most famous examples from that book is this, architect from Zimbabwe studied termites because he had to figure out how to design a building that didn't have electricity in Zimbabwe. And so how in the world was he gonna do this to design a building that would stay cool year round? Well, termites do these elaborate, mounds to keep their eggs at a constant temperature. So he looked at how those were designed and and designed a building based on that. Now he's a super famous architect, but he there's tons of examples of innovation happening where we can think about think situations that have seemingly nothing to do with one another. But if we ask ourselves, okay. What are the core concepts? Design, temperature, airflow, you know, things of that nature, we can we can pull out the the common principles and apply them to new situations. So what can we learn from termites about architecture? Like, that's pretty awesome. And so I think the the teachers who who most embrace this, that's what their classroom can look like. They students can be going all kinds of crazy places. So one of the things that we do in the book is we have a classroom a and a classroom b sort of comparison.

Speaker 3 And I'll use myself as an example. My, like, first year teaching, I taught twelfth grade English language arts, and we had, like, our Beowulf unit. So my kids read Beowulf. I dragged them through it. I knew that it was painful, but I was like, it's on the curriculum. I gotta do it. They made, like, a little shield with their family crest on the end, and, you know, I they they took a multiple choice test. And it was it was it was horrible. I I could feel their pain, and I and I tried to make it fun. I'd use memes and videos and pop culture references and really tried to just, like, make it tolerable. But since encountering Julie's work and, sort of developing, like, the the learning the transfers method. What I've realized is I really didn't care that much if my kids knew who Wiglaf was or if they, you know, remembered the the battle between Beowulf and the monster. What I was really thinking about, what really mattered was do students have an understanding of the way that stories can shape a culture, the way that heroes and villains interact in complex ways, the way that, the stories that are told in history shape the cultural reality of today. That's what I cared about. So, what I then sort of my my most recent unit, think this was just 2019. Every time is bleeding together when I think about that that COVID, year that got chopped in half. I instead of spending so much time on Beowulf, we did a, like, a a flyby of it. But then what we spent some time doing is reading Ta Nehisi Coates' Black Panther graphic novel series. And what that did is it, a, brought in some, different diverse perspectives where we're not just talking about, like, you know, the dead white Anglo Saxon males. We were having that same conversation, though, about how history, culture, and stories shapes the heroes. And but instead, we were looking at it from the sort of, like, African diaspora perspective that Black Panther sort of meant to illustrate. And instead of organizing my instruction around this individual text, I'm teaching Beowulf or even I'm teaching this Black Panther graphic novel series, but we're really teaching and and learning about and exploring together was the relationship between heroes, villains, culture, perspective, conflict, narrative. And just to show the kind of flexibility that can lead to is it was the day after The US launched the strike on Iran and killed general Soleimani, and World War three was trending on Twitter. My students came in, they were kind of freaked out. They're like, you know, are we gonna go to war? What's happening? Can we just talk about this? So, typically, if if you were to think back to my classroom a self, I would have been, well, kids, we're learning about Beowulf. So there's not really much connective tissue between dead Anglo Saxons and our geopolitical reality right now. But instead, because we're focusing on heroes, villains, power, narratives, perspectives, we were able to take that their understanding of those big ideas, of those concepts, and have a dialogue about how they can use those ideas to make sense of what was happening geopolitically, but also themselves. And and that turned to a conversation about how, generations these students use technology as a way to communicate and feel like they have some sort of power in the the big scary things that are happening in the world, which, again, is so far afield from Beowulf. But when you're thinking about these big organizing ideas, you can bring in a whole bunch of different types of texts, and you can have students, like, leverage that conversation and really be agile and nimble. I think that's a big focus of the work is being agile and nimble so you can use students' understanding to,

Speaker 2 respond to what's happening in their lives, what's happening, in their communities. I like using the word that we're moving away from as making learning, tolerable. I I I've been guilty of that as well. I used to be, much more of a classroom a teacher. I remember developing the Minecraft unit to teach, some something like like, the industrial revolution or something. And it was it was cool. I mean, the kids liked it more than PowerPoint. But at the end of the day, it was a ton of work to basically teach kids how to use Minecraft. It was alright. It could be better. Regardless, I think what you all are getting at that's super important to recognize is that I think when people associate school with learning, a lot of students have now associated learning with something that's bad or not fun or boring, etcetera. Whereas learning anything is naturally interesting if it has a point to it. I'm gonna do a brief promotion here. We had a a podcast a while back. This is, like, early last year. The CEO of Butterscotch Shenanigans, who's a game developer who has has a really successful mobile games. And he was talking about how in their research for creating this game that's about, like, basically conquering an alien planet, they studied monkey movements on, like, this jungle plane and how they moved throughout the world and gathered resources. It was just all this random, completely random stuff from, like, biology textbooks, social sciences textbooks, and they were into it. And this is a guy who hated science in school, who hated, like, learning about this kind of stuff. And I I myself do a lot of game development, PBL type stuff, for kids that are interested. And it's always the kids that tend to not really like traditional academics, but all of a sudden, they're like, we watch, like, videos by Will Wright, the guy that made the sims and all the sim city games. And the dude literally has a pile of books that he reads in order to learn this stuff. And all of sudden, kids are picking up books and learn about all this scientific theory. The the fact of the matter is as long as the the thing itself that we're building into is interesting, we understand the relevance of it. Humans like learning things. It's fun to learn about things. But if I don't see the relevance of it or I just don't care, or someone's telling me exactly what to do every single step of the way, it no longer has that that that beautiful connection. The exact same reason why, you know, when we're in elementary school, everyone tends to raise their hand. And then as we go over and over again, we stop talking about dinosaurs in space, and it just gets boring. I like the idea and how that connects. As you're embracing these different principles, do you wanna relate them to perhaps other things that are in, like, a more progressive pedagogy? So things like maybe, like, critical pedagogy, student voice, anti racism, that kind of stuff. How does it connect to, like, the broader social picture or power picture?

Speaker 4 Yeah. I think there there was so many ways, but just sort of going back to your example that you were giving and also that one that Trevor gave, I think one of the things sort of the the the false dichotomies that we find out there is, like, should we keep teaching this sort of core knowledge back to referencing Edie Hirsch that, like, everybody in society agrees and we all know about this stuff versus throw it all out and, you know, just put a three d printer in in the compute and an iPad in the room, and and then we've got this twenty first century learning. And and neither of those seems like a good idea to me that we march students through this sort of required knowledge that everybody in the in the culture or society agrees is or, I guess, the people in power agree is the most important. But really sort of looking at how do we help students acquire understanding of individual concepts that are transferable? How do we help them connect those in relationship and then transfer to these situations? It's also building a culture of transfer because, ultimately, we want students to recognize the deeper structural patterns of any new situation. And so I feel like there's sort of two ways in which, and maybe, I don't know, I would love to hear Kay Caitlin and Trevor's thoughts about this too. But I when I think when I hear sort of, critical race theory or, antiracist education, things like that, I sort of think of two ways. One is, of course, students can access those things via they can access sort of a diversity of of perspectives, text, point of view, like Trevor gave with that example of Beowulf and Black Panther. So that's, like, step one is sort of among the different situations, the fact rich context that students bring to a situation, their prior experiences they bring to situations. Concepts allow students to and teachers a lot of flexibility. As long as students are looking at sort of the the relationship between and among concepts, they can go study whatever they wanna study. And so one of the things I love that Trevor just came up with recently is looking on we have a continuum of academic transfer to real world transfer. And if you're thinking about English language arts, and and, you a product would be, like, an academic discourse, like a Socratic seminar or something like that, which are still important, and Trevor still does a lot of that in his in his classroom. And but students could transfer to a podcast, to a YouTube video, to, you know, whatever it is they want to do in a and aim and analyze a particular YouTuber that the teacher has no idea who this is or what, you know, what this is, and the student becomes sort of the expert be in that particular context, but the concepts are what sort of link those. So I think that's kind of one way in which this really aligns with those particular pedagogies that you mentioned. In another way, what we're trying to do is move teachers from I teach math, and I've gotta teach the quadratic formula, to I teach students, you know, about about data and data literacy and and quantitative reasoning and, you know, sort of expanding the the idea of what it is that I teach, especially for secondary teachers. And so we've so, basically, chapter three of our book is called disciplinary literacy and how do we look at, like, the purpose of our discipline in in the world. And chapter four is what we've termed a new term we've deemed modern literacies. And so what we encourage teachers to do is consider their students, consider their school. Let's say if they're an IB school, they've got the IB learner profile. And consider their students, consider their school, consider their passions as educators, and choose one or two modern literacies, which is our bucket you know, our umbrella term for anything outside of the traditional disciplines or standards that you feel kids need to navigate this complex world. So it could be digital citizenship. It could be critical theory. It could be so many different aspects and choose one of those. And then you can do the same exact thing that we're we're advocating you do with math and science, etcetera, which is what are the most fundamental concepts within that field? How do they connect, and how do they transfer? How do they play out in different situations? And so I think, you know, really helping teachers to to say to say, look. Pick something. And if you don't want to, you don't have to. But you were we're very flexible. So, you know, most teachers are it's freeing for especially people who write books about curriculum design and and are hired by their school to do training, to come in and say, do you have something that you really, really think like, design thinking? Do you have something that you really feel students need to navigate this complex world? And and maybe it is critical race theory. Then break them down into concepts, teach the concepts, teach students how to connect them, and how to transfer them to new situations. And it it becomes sort of the same exact model that that teachers can apply to to teach all of those things. So that's also really cool. And I think some other,

Speaker 5 big pedagogical kind of focuses, especially if you're on Twitter, of being mastery based or student ownership or these authentic experiences going in that realm. I think that we hit on that a lot with our assessment chapter. We don't mention grading because grading is just that conversation that is different no matter where you are, but our whole purpose of assessment and what leans into that mastery mindset is we're a system of feedback and not just isolated bits. And so I feel like that's a connection that is really, that connects so nicely throughout our stuff. It's not, again, the memorization of the concepts. I can tell you the definition. Oh, I can give you one example. So check. I got that right. But how do we have this system of feedback in place? So we really help students see their level of mastery. They can self assess. They can see how well they can connect or transfer concepts. And in that, there's again that that student ownership or that, partnership piece where, like, they both mentioned, it doesn't matter the context necessarily. As long as we have these conceptual connections and students have that as their focus, they can really kind of design their own learning experiences and keep that piece at the concepts at the center of that. And so then the teacher is just helping facilitate, give them, resources if needed, or give them feedback if needed. And then I think everything we're doing is leaning into experiences versus just being in class. It's really a more active versus passive, kind of mindset that we really want students to embrace. And so just adding on to some of the other things that are kind of like the the buzzwords that are hopping around, I feel like we're really connecting into those, all from that strength based of students are coming to the table with a wide variety of strengths and expertise in their own right, and then we're going to help them use that to unlock those new situations.

Speaker 3 And if if you think about some of those things that you were bringing up, like critical race theory, anti racism, these are incredibly complex systemic societal things. And if we're to help students make sense and make meaning of them, the the acquire, connect, transfer sort of model is a really helpful way to break down complex interactions between systems. So it's a way to organize information. And when you're dealing with something as complex as critical race theory, making that accessible to students is really important. So I taught the critical lenses to my high school sophomores, for example. But what I ended up finding was they were getting sort of trapped and lost in the theoretical jargon. You know, am I using the Marxist lens, or am I using the feminist lens, or the colonial lens? And, like, that wasn't my goal. It wasn't goal for them to to have an understanding of these sort of more theoretical technical jargon that they might encounter in, like, a college literature course. What I really wanted them to understand was the relationship between individuals, groups, and systems and the role that power plays and the experiences of those people within those systems. So I sort of centered that as the essential question for my year. That was the question that we explored, and that was the lens that we viewed all the texts that we read through. So by doing that, it's a way to make those sort of complex theoretical ideas and concepts accessible for students and to give them ownership of them and to see how those things are playing out in their daily life, how they're playing out in the content that, you're reading or or exploring in class. And it was just really cool to see my students sort of take on ownership of that understanding and not being like, am I using the correct word to describe this thing that mister Elio told me? And more being like, okay, what is the role of, power if we're looking at gender dynamics or if we are looking at, race. So over the course of the year, my students read a variety of these different texts and stories, but throughout the whole thing, they were always asking themselves, what's the relationship between individuals, groups, and systems, and what role does power play? And that accomplished my goal of having my students evaluate and interrogate the, sort of systems and structures that shape our lives and experiences, without feeling like they had to tap into this highly theoretical sort of language that I was presenting, to them. So it it's really when you're focusing on giving students ownership of that, and to sort of Kayla's point, once students understood that, they had a kind of quick design thinking unit where they had to go out into their community and try to figure out how what was their role as an individual to interact and have a conversation with a group of people who had power within a system. So as students try to get, like, a speed bump taken down in their neighborhood, The the woman that they called at the HOA actually laughed at them when they first tried because they didn't think that they were being serious. I had students who tried to advocate for better, mental health, support at our school. We had had had a student who had taken their life earlier in the year, and students were kind of upset at the lack of support that they felt like that they were getting. So when you're focusing on these sort of big transferable concepts, it's a way to help students leverage their prior knowledge. It's like, I know. I understand what power looks like. I've been in a situation where I have felt, like the other based on my race, class, gender, etcetera. And I can use that understanding and that knowledge to access complex ideas in the stories I read in class or complex situations, and things that I'm seeing on the news. So it's what's great about it is it's just a way to break down complex situations, and it's a way to make those ideas and goals, for students,

Speaker 4 to really empower them and give them that ownership. I think two other ways I was thinking of as we were speaking that I just feel like I have to be explicit about, we've we've alluded to them, but the the importance of iterative learning or cyclical learning that it's not linear, and that so, you know, we're very explicit over and over again that we have to tell our students that learning is not one and done. Learn is learning is not do I know it, do I not know it, but it's a constant lifelong endeavor of considering what we understand, comparing it to what we are learning right now, and refining our prior understanding. And that that's crucial because nobody sort of nobody can knows what the the solution is to inequity, for instance, right off the bat. And it's it's thorny. It's tricky. There's a lot going on. And so how do you bring that into the classroom where the teacher is relatively neutral? So I do think that it is as a social studies teacher, I do think it is important that we are there sort of providing these, controversial conversations for our students and and sort of taking somewhat of a of a less opinionated stance, bringing in different videos, things of that nature. We're really asking our students, even in math and science, so not just in the humanities, which is mostly where where critical race theory might sit, is, okay. How does your understanding of gravity change now that we've looked at it in this situation? How does your understanding of kinetic energy sort of refined or deepened now that we've looked at it in this in this situation? And so, like, the whole pedagogical approach of like Trevor gave that example of, here's this big overarching question. And we're gonna keep coming back to it because when we look at how these concepts play out in these other situations, it makes us pause, and it makes us say, wait. Wait. Woah. Woah. Woah. What I thought I understood is not quite is not quite right. Let me kind of come back and refine my thinking. And so I think that's huge. The other piece I really wanna mention is that if if kids cannot transfer their understanding about bias, about racism, about stereotypes to new situations, then all this or even teachers for that matter, then all the training that a lot of people are going through right now is is for not. And so I think that's the other piece is that by creating this culture of transfer, you're not just saying, hey. Let's learn about redlining. Let's learn about all these things that happened in the past that were horrible, and how do they impact today. But we're we're really sort of making sure students can recognize, all the isms in a new situation. They they can recognize sexism. They can recognize racism because we sort of taught them this culture of transfer where they can look and say, oh, I'm seeing an an injustice here. I'm seeing inequality here in this completely new situation that my teacher has not ever told told me explicitly about. So that sort of culture of transfer really allows students, to to, obviously, to transfer their learning to new situations to to see things, that we want them to see when they encounter new situations.

Speaker 2 What you all are talking about is something that always comes up whenever we talk about progressive education in general, which is if I walk into a classroom and my goal is to teach something regarding social justice, for example, racism classes, etcetera, and I just do a lesson plan, and it's a traditional lesson plan about those topics, I'm not actually teaching that much about the injustice because the system that I'm working in is still inherently oppressive. And as a result, the students probably aren't going to take that much away from that lesson as if it were taught from a conceptual lens. So if we were to teach it as students have the voice and choice, they are the ones that are kind of in control of this this project or unit, and they are the ones going out and experiencing that and talking about their past experiences. That has way more resonance and a connection. And it also in terms of, like, critical race theory or critical pedagogy, it it's kinda meta. You're changing the classroom management and classroom style to reflect the systems that you want to see in the world. And we're we're kind of balancing out, like like, I guess, like, Dell pit argument of you need to hold students to a high standard, and they need to have some knowledge equipped, like, in their back pocket that if they go off into the, quote, unquote, real world, they're ready to go. On the on the other hand, we also have to ensure that from, like, a, I guess, like, a Garogh or Hook standpoint that you're also equipping students with the necessary knowledge and necessary, like, anti authoritarianism that they can also go out and change that world. Our goal isn't necessarily to prepare students for the world that it is today. Our goal is to change how they actually view the world so that they can change it later. And by changing these systems and focusing on concepts, that meta side of things is what's really gonna do that, not the explicit here's this, this, and this. Mhmm. Delicious.

Speaker 4 The the listeners can't see, but we're all nodding our heads as you're saying the the part about the goal is not for students to navigate the world that exists, but to create the worlds that should exist, that they think, not we think should exist. And so I think that's that's that's just delicious.

Speaker 3 And I think that going back to Julie's reference to our disciplinary literacy chapter and our modern literacy chapter, that really is where we kind of flesh out that balance between, that this sort of, like, Del Pit versus Hook sort of dynamic where students need to have access to academic discourses in order to enter into those spaces where they can make systemic change. But at the same time, if all you do is give them access to those without also empowering them to change them, you aren't changing anything. So that disciplinary literacy is really thinking about how can we teach students in ways that allow them to construct and build knowledge in the way that experts in the fields would or do. Right? That's where the teacher has expertise in in creating learning experiences. But then our our modern literacies chapter is based off a lot of research from people like James Paul g, Lancashire Noble, Bill Cope, and Mary Clancy around this thing emerging called new literacies, which is this idea that there are all of these new, discourses and bodies of knowledge that our students have access to that we don't. But if you think about concepts, patterns, and structures, students can take what they learn about collaboration, communication, negotiation, and inquiry in a more traditional sort of academic context, like a Socratic seminar or some sort of, like, research presentation. But then also keeping in mind, the goal is to have them then transfer that understanding of those concepts and structures to, I I've had students, like, produce a podcast. So, like, they have an academic discourse, but then it's like, okay. So you you take these concepts that we've talked about, and you're going to pick a book that you that you are interested in that explore these themes. And now you're gonna create a podcast, but they're still because they're working in a group, because they're having conversation, because they are collaborating with one another and asking questions, they're still using those same concepts, those same structures. But they become the expert because they understand how the different stylistics behind the way those conversations play out in their favorite podcasts or on their favorite YouTube channels. So it's really creating a bridge between those two sort of seemingly, like, dichotomous things, and it's more about thinking about them as a on a continuum. And how can we how can we, sort of oscillate back and forth between those two things to satisfy the realities that teachers have in the classroom while also empowering a generation of students who can change those realities to be more accessible and and open.

Speaker 1 Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects podcast. I hope that this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education. You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.