What *was* lost during the pandemic? Here's how we rebuild our classrooms.

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to episode 97 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 wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Jordan Baca, Aubrey Holloman, and John White. Thank you for your ongoing support. You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Today, Nick and I are continuing our dissection of learning loss via our learning loss handbook. In part one, we spoke about the myth surrounding learning loss and the dire implications it has in our practice in schools. And if you haven't listened in yet, I highly recommend checking out that episode. So we wanted to provide just a brief summary of what we spoke about. And ostensibly, it's a discussion about how learning loss is not real, at least not in the sense that we currently are interpreting it. The data doesn't really add up. The test scores are barely down, if down at all. And our focus on those test scores can have dire implications for how we lead our classrooms. Nick, is there anything that stood out to you about that discussion? Yeah. I I loved our discussion

Speaker 2 of the the testing elements themselves, the the questions, and really digging into that that question itself, the deeper question of, are these things really worth measuring in the first place? And then are the tests worth responding to if, you know, the the the questions themselves, which the data shows, maybe kids are scoring, I don't know, zero to to two to three questions less on a standardized test. Is it worth, you know, redesigning our education systems to overcome or to recover that quote unquote lost learning? I thought I thought that was fascinating.

Speaker 1 So today we're talking about, okay, what do we do now? What actually was lost in the pandemic? Because no one's claiming that a global pandemic did not cause problems in education. It's just not solely nor should it be solely focused on standardized test scores. So we're gonna break down what we can do instead in the class. We're gonna talk about the how. So in our learning loss handbook, it's kinda divided into three sections that we'll break down here today. The first thing just deals with how do we break this apart, how we tease apart what it is that we're talking about and have that discussion with students. Then we'll talk about what systematic change can we affect in our classrooms to counteract what was lost in the pandemic. And then finally, we'll wrap it up with a discussion about creative non compliance and how you can do this if you are in a district that is focused on this myth of learning loss. With that said, this section of our booklet kicks off with an article by Alfie Cohn, who graciously provided us with this text. And essentially, the whole article, to summarize it, is talking about how, yes, standardized test scores went down, but learning was not lost. He summarizes a variety of different research that demonstrates that a diminution of learning cannot be summarized in standardized test scores. And when we study the concept specifically of summer slide, that even though test scores are down, the concept of learning cannot go down. Like, that doesn't equate to the exact same thing. And in fact, in many cases, I guess, life skills or other things that you learn or just your, like, your general ability to learn new things goes up over time because you're getting older. And it tends to be up until a certain age. We get better and better at learning things. I guess at some point we're like a toddler or something, I guess. So it's it's a pretty good article and it showcases a lot of very interesting things and you should check it out. But I don't think we're gonna summarize that whole thing. Yeah. I think one thing that is really interesting to go back to our first part is that slowly comes back to me too. But

Speaker 2 one of the things that we talked about then was was kind of that notion of the summer slide as sort of one of the preceding myths before its current iteration as, you know, pandemic learning loss. And one of the things that that comes out of this, which which Alfie Cohn cites as a the most widely cited source on the topic of summer slide, the effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores, which which he points out not on learning. He says, but even given that narrow focus, it's noteworthy that the declines were mostly confined to quote, factual and procedural knowledge such as math computation and spelling skills. Now these would be things I think that if they're purely academic or purely classroom things, we would expect you know a natural sort of decline if you think about that that learning and forgetting curve, that Ebbinghaus curve that Frank Smith makes famous in his, the book of learning and forgetting. But those would be things that we would expect procedural kind of training, rote memorizational aspects that you just lose over time but that with a little bit of practice you can recover pretty quickly like you know getting on a bike you're gonna relearn how to use a formula that you had previously learned and maybe hadn't used before. Just probably like any adults or you or you or me Chris might be able to help, like, kids with their math homework, but it takes you a minute to remember, oh, yeah. That's what we're trying to accomplish here. And then you kinda get back on that that that computational bicycle again. So kind of just talking in reasonable terms about about the the the panic over summer learning loss as it's applicable to this current context.

Speaker 1 Right. And I I think that that that's a perfect segue into one of our major recommendations on how to deal with this, which is bringing students into that conversation so you can hear directly from them what they feel like they have lost. Usually, the best solution, especially when it comes to, like, human centered or progressive pedagogy, is just talking with kids because they're the ones that are there. And at least in my experience anecdotally, I've never had a student tell me that they are concerned about how low their test scores were last year. There have been many other things they've been focused on that we'll get here in a second. We have, I believe three different, context building activities that we've included inside the handbook. And each of them is a graphic organizer of sorts, which is essentially a discussion talking about the exact same things we spoke about in part one of our podcast and what we're talking about right now. The first graphic organizer simply talks with students about what learning was lost. For example, one of the questions is, this school year there's been a prominent focus on the idea of learning loss. Learning loss is the belief that students are months behind in primarily math and reading. Due to missed instruction, given your experiences, do you believe that you lost out on learning last year? And then you'd like write that down. You ask them, hey, was what you lost primarily academic last year or was it something else? Like was it social emotional well-being? Was it something like with your friends? Was it being able to go out? Etcetera etcetera. Just brainstorming what they had lost. And then that builds into a question surrounding, is learning loss a self fulfilling prophecy? And you'd probably need a breakdown what that term means. But it's it's kind of bringing students into the game, of school when it comes to anything, whether it be grading, standardized tests, curriculum building. No matter what it is, there's so much power in just pulling students behind the curtain and showing them your thought process and why you're doing the things that you're doing. Because one, it makes it more transparent and lessens that power gap. But two, I think kids find that kinda cool. They feel like they're, like, part of the process. It's kinda, like, revolutionary, I guess. And I think it helps them decompress some of that energy they might have toward, I don't know, say like authority. Like a lot of times when we're running our classrooms and you just kind of like going through these activities, you're still the one in charge.

Speaker 2 But the more opportunities you allow students to contextualize what you're going through and why you're doing the things that you're doing and why we do the things that we do in school, the more say they have and being able to change that narrative and frame your perspective on what's going on. I think I'm making sense. Nick, am I making sense? I think for the most part, yeah. What what I think, you know, you could use a variety of tools as well. And I and I think we include in here the example of a of a Poll Everywhere, which is a tool that I use a lot in my class. And what's cool about that is is Poll Everywhere has a built in I call it the rate your pain scale. So it kind of runs the gamut of, you know, positive to neutral to, like, really negative emotions. So you can just use that to to get a quick feel for how students are thinking about a particular topic, you know, like, hey, rate your rate your learning on so far on this unit. But also, right, for maybe SEL check ins and, of course, for this question about, like, how did you feel about what you did in school last year? Or you could talk to them about specific activities that you felt that hybrid or online classes or teachers that they had last year, which might not have been you, but what activities in those context did they find most valuable or what did what did they think had had met them where they were at in their home rather than try to again replicate the structures of school inside of kids' bedrooms. So I've actually gotten a lot of good feedback from kids on that about, like, oh, hey. We did too many pear decks last year in this class, so I kinda have a PTSD about going through those pear decks. So it's like, okay. Cool. I only have this one, but thanks for letting me know. Or even in my own course, I use quizzes a whole lot. And kids now, they tell me that a lot of teachers are using that after the pandemic. And I say to to that, I just say, hey. That's the tool I've got. I I don't know what to say about that. But, yeah, you could try to mix it up. Talk to other teachers about what works certainly, but also just talk to kids about what they like to do in class. I know, Chris, you've even had more more recent success with GIMkit as kind of a collaborative tool.

Speaker 1 Our school purchased GIMkit for all the teachers without any of the teachers testing it out first, which I guess I guess is not always the best thing. But, I I was one of the first ones on our team to, attempt using it. And the kids loved it. Because I I told them flat out, like, hey, if you don't like this, we're never gonna do it ever again. Again. But we're just gonna beta test this and see how it goes. And practically, single student said, hey, this is better than anything else that I've done. They'll last forever too. Like, it is it is a thing. There is, like, a humans versus zombies, like, team mode. There's a lot of cooperative games, which I really liked. It's not nearly as, Jeopardy like as Kahoot is or something like that. I've always been really bothered by the super competitive, like, someone has to win. Also, someone has to lose. Someone who gets all the questions wrong feels like they're not contributing, like they can't catch up. And it's also very time based. Most of, not all, but most of the Kim Kitt games are cooperative, and most of them are work at your own pace. So it doesn't matter how quickly you can read the questions because it's all on your own device. So I I like that a lot. So I think whether it's talking about, right, the experiences that kids have or even the tools that they found

Speaker 2 either repetitive or or useful, I think it's important just to then kind of reflect on, like, hey, what are some similarities that we all faced in in all of this? Or or what were some of the differences? Again, because a lot of pandemics did not fall upon all communities and all families equally. So there might be more kids who need a little bit more time and effort and energy to to become accustomed to what whatever in person. You can never say post pandemic anymore, but what in person learning looks like at this point in the in the pandemic. So just having some space then to reflect on those those commonalities and and give feedback on what they want this classroom space to be able to look like. And in my own experience this year, in in talk with you, Chris, and and with colleagues, you know, at the beginning of the year, my students were very transactional in the way that they viewed their learning. And I think some of that comes from the way that we approach school last year, which, of course, was kind of school as a checklist. You know, you'd get the you'd have a checklist posted on the Canvas or on your Google Classroom on Monday and then, like, okay. These assignments are due on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And I found that, well, the way that I approach my say my AP Euro class in particular is a lot more open ended. Know, it's a lot more about being prepared for discussions or it's about reflecting on how say your experience and thoughts match those of the in the primary sources that we're experiencing. Right? Or we're evaluating conclusions. So kids kids have gotten frustrated with me and and seemingly, you know, some of my loosey goosey ness on it. I think it's really a reaction to sort of the rigidity and and sort of that that transactional style that we had during online and hybrid learning in particular. And now that we're, you know, more face to face and we could do more open ended kinds of activities, they really wanna know what what do I need to have done? What is this thing is this or that thing rated or or what am I supposed to be doing on this? And I just have to tell them all the time, hey, it's gonna be okay. Just just read through this, record your thoughts on it, bring it back tomorrow and we'll talk. Yeah. I don't know if your experience has been the same, but that's kind of been mine so far this year. Yeah. Yeah. For for us, and maybe it's just because I teach entirely freshmen and I have for for years now. The major thing that we've seen is there's there's definitely a bit of that, but it's primarily been built up social unrest.

Speaker 1 So like, just not being able to like be around other people. So a lot of just like, I don't know, middle school things. Like running around and jumping on each other and touching each other and those kind of things that typically you don't wanna happen inside. Like, that's like an outdoor, like, gym type activity, but we don't have to visit. It's been trying to find ways that our students can move around and connect with each other during class where they're not just seated there. Because a lot of virtual learning was very much just, like, get through it, sit and get, and then it's over. And I think a lot of kids were felt very isolated. And now that it's not isolated anymore, they could finally be with their friends again. And that's that's been a lot, even still in October. And I I think that kinda just built into the point of the purpose of these context building activities is to have sort of a radical transparency with students so students understand your thought process behind why you might be trying out new things, which we'll get to in the next section. Students are much more likely to go along with change in the classroom if they're part of your coalition. Jonathan Kozol talks about in his work a lot about building this coalition up between students and parents and families and community members who are all in your wheelhouse to understand why you're doing what you're doing and will back you up when it gets there. I think about early in my career when I started doing a lot of ungrading, I would have parents reach out heavily concerned about what was going on in my class because I never really informed them about what exactly was going on or why I was doing it. And I didn't do a very good job either of telling my students why I was doing it. So to them, it was like, well, this weird teacher is doing all this weird stuff, and he's gonna, like, let me fail. Over time, I got much better at clearly communicating, like, this is the reason why I do it. Here's the research that supports it. Let's talk about grades and break them down, in the exact same way where as now we're talking about learning loss. This is the reason why class looks like this. This is the reason why I wanna focus more on play and cooperation. How was your experience like in isolation? Here's how we can fix that together. What ideas do you have to fix these things? And building that class together is a very powerful experience that is is truly authentic relationship building. Instead of doing some not to disparage against icebreakers, but like dumb icebreakers, which are just like usually a chore. We could instead make a systemic relationship builder where students actually do have power that they can influence your class. We basically then take, that concept of building a class together through a variety of different discussions, taking down notes, etcetera, and have an activity where you and students kind of write this out, like they decipher it, where you write down things like what did we lose, what did we miss out on, and what we'll do differently this year. And that can help us build forward back better. And that can happen at any time, whether you listen to this podcast in October or maybe it's next year or maybe it's years from now. The ability to just take your class and say, hey, we're gonna do something all new altogether because you don't like what we're doing right now. That's powerful. To kinda like wrap up this context building section, we do have some clips from folks, when HRP did our a hundred days of conversations about school with Reimvision Education. We collected over 500 different folks who told us about reimagining education post pandemic. And during those discussions, a lot of different folks shared exactly what did they lose out on, what were they thinking, what do they wanna see change. And here's a few of those voices right now.

Speaker 3 As another student, I would definitely agree with that and how, how important those connections are with, you know, like friends and other classmates and, even teachers because most of my teachers this year, have never met in person. And I don't really know them, and I think, between students and teachers, there's it is important to sort of have a connection of feeling like you know this person and that you feel like they can help you. And the same with classmates. I have some classmates that I've never really talked to or met before, and it's the same with that as it, like, even if you don't always wanna, like, turn to your teachers for help, can turn to, like, people who are closer to your age or make connections with them. You know, like, I just recently got my driver's license, and it's you know so before, it was like, oh, I couldn't really drive to my friend's house or go to hang out. And now it's like, do have that ability, but I still, you know, can't go and hang out with those people because where would you go? And, like, how would you be able to actually hang out and keep that connection?

Speaker 4 Although it did help me, I guess, transportation wise, I'm a little far. You know, it would have been it it did, you know, make a lot of things convenient, But I I guess, just realizing that human interaction is so vital and just, like, the energy of people and just really, like, one thing I know I I noticed I missed is eye contact because sometimes, like, when you, like, really, are just, like, digesting information and really are just, like, invested in the conversation, especially when you're being lectured, like, just that eye contact really, like, solidifies, like, that, like, everything right now is just so pure, and, like, this is, like like, a learning space. And in my class, I was the it was, like, 20 kids in this political science class. I'm literally the only one with my camera on. So it was a very different vibe when I and it was awesome because I felt like it was, like, a catered class to myself. But I definitely was thinking, how does my professor feel, sitting behind a screen with one face when, really, it used to be him getting to lecture in front of a a classroom full of folks.

Speaker 5 Even in the second semester of college for me, it's it's difficult with things being on a screen because I do have a set circle of friends here who are very good and support me, and we all get along very well. But there's there's a lack of, like, connection in each of your classes that I don't think I ever realized was so important before, even if it's just commiserating over how how difficult that last test was or how much this professor kind of sucks because they don't give us good enough notes to work off of or whatever. Even, like, that casual socialization is, like, really important and and and, like, thriving in school and feeling like you're you're heard and that other people understand what you're going through. And so it's it's difficult not having that, and it I don't think I would have realized how important that was if it hadn't been, you know, taken away by COVID.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I think the the takeaway from these conversations should really be, right, about the need now for students to make that connection that they felt that they had lost during, right, a time where social distancing, I was gonna say, was more necessary but maybe it was just taken more seriously. And, right, schools schools were were were not the active hubs for not just academic activities in the classroom but also for extracurriculars too that that a lot of students missed out on. So, yeah, there there is that need for community building I think to an extent that there hasn't been before. And in my own experience with this this year is is seeing students that I have had last year online and then seeing them for the first time in class at the start of this year, there's still students that that come in and talk to me because their experience of the pandemic is like linked to their experience of my class. And I'm not sure if they're doing the same with some of their other remote teachers too but I think one of the ways that I approached my online class was to focus on that community piece because I felt like it was the most vital part to focus on. Plus you know the limits that were kind of placed upon us in those situations made what I've kind of thought at the time the academic push a little bit of a futile effort without without dehumanizing kids and their experience of it. So I think I think, you know, the way that we're feeling about this, Chris, like, is corroborated by these student responses. So I think that there's also the value in this is just going with our gut feeling perhaps to your point about GIMkit. Right? The kids are not gonna have think this is fun. I I don't think this is great. And then they do it and they say they want some more of that and we can be responsive to that. So so when in doubt, always listen to kids. Right? Right. Right. And it just kinda builds itself.

Speaker 1 And this builds into the three actions towards systemic change that we recommend, that folks do, which are free play, community connections, and social emotional learning. So transforming our classes into spaces that have more free play, that are more connected to communicate community, and, focus on, social emotional learning. So let's talk a second about free play and what that means. So free play is defined as having three elements according to, this this Harvard study that we linked in here, which is really interesting you should check out. So there's choice. So participants are the ones that are choosing the goals, rules, and period of play. There's wonder. So participants create, imagine, explore, and learn. And finally, there's delight. Participants are happy and they feel at ease. A lot of gamification, doesn't really meet those three goals of choice, wonder, and delight. A lot of them are just kind of like disguise academics. I would you can do it well. Like when students play Genkit, even though there is an academic question component to that, most of them, not all, but most of them are heavily engaged. And for those folks that aren't engaged, then we need to find something else for them. It's not like there's gonna be left out. But finding ways to basically just play games with your class. And we we ask some reflection questions here about, is there time for play in your class even if it's not academic? I'm very fortunate. I teach in a computer lab. The kids play video games all the time. I I don't stop them. I'll intentionally have lessons that are like fifteen to twenty minutes long just to give the kids time to play games. I tell them like, yo, today we're just gonna play video games together. I've been dominating some crunker, which apparently is like this really weird browser based FPS game. But I play with the kids and I suck and the kids love it. And that's that's fine. It's just something that you can do with your kids that's fun. We we recommend things like, hey, have a board game day. Maybe you play some smartphone games, heads up. Even though for these kids, it's become, like, really cringey, but among us, still a thing. You have, like, Jackbox games. My kids have always loved Jackbox games even though they they're maybe not for the younger kids. Even like outdoor stuff, tag, hide and seek. Everyone needs time to play and decompress and just have fun, adults included.

Speaker 2 And I and I think too, I I I would hate for us to fall into the the same trap of thinking that learning and play are somehow mutually exclusive things either because there there's a lot of research that actually supports that, you know, when kids are playing, they it's a deeply cognitive task for them. And and, you know, kind of going back to, I don't know, No Child Left Behind, which especially in in elementary schools and things put a lot of pressure to reduce that that reduced free play time in exchange for, like, highly structured academic class time and really kind of then seeing the lack of value put into which for kids is a cognitively rigorous task. We actually you know, by keeping them in more structured classroom spaces where they don't have access to free play. Like, we're we're limiting them cognitively at the same time. And then we wonder why when they get to middle school and high school, they you know, we have those conversations about executive skills. And then those things could maybe be nipped in the bud by letting them have some more choice play. But at the same time, Chris, I'm making connections too to like self determination theory. And I just had read another link that Alfie Cohn had posted to this giant meta analysis. I think it's something like over 400 studies they looked at with hundreds of thousands of students involved in the studies. Like a tremendous amount of research into this. And the three key pillars of self determination theory which is like a positive predictor of, you know, intrinsic motivation, which that obviously has positive connections to life and life and academic outcomes as well. But when I see choice, wonder, and delight, it makes me think of the self determination theories competency, autonomy, and relevance or or connectivity to that as well. So it's really interesting that if you start to think we've almost come full circle in the sense of, right, going from free play as as an inherently good thing that we just value in kids. You know, just because we see them being happier, healthier, little humans as a result to being right now, determination theory is like a mainstream, well supported research backed practice that is almost completely absent from from schools in my experience. I had never heard anything about in any school driven PD in my ten years. But we're coming full full full circle back to choice, wonder, and delight, right, through kind of competence, autonomy, connectivity, relevance, all those kinds of things that actually create intrinsically motivated happier kids. So, you know, a lot of times you could have a class that's structured where it doesn't look like free play but essentially that's what kids are doing. If you have you know a classroom that's set up to be intrinsically motivating or allow kids to have teacher supportive autonomy in those those those ways they'll exceed your expectations you know on any kind of task because it turns an academic and otherwise academic task essentially into a self driven right, choice based activity where they they are in charge of of their learning and and to an extent like that's that that could be on the free play radar too, you know. Yeah. I think that's a really good point and I think that it helps to to

Speaker 1 kind of ease that feeling that you might have. I know for me, I sometimes get nervous having a class where there is no quote unquote academic attachment to what we're doing in class that day. Like, I've had days where we just play Jackbox games the entire period. There is no standard base thing that I am doing at that point. But if you understand that research behind what you're doing, it can help give you a backup behind saying, this is my relationship builder. This is how kids learn. They are actually learning just as much doing this than they would've if I would've lectured all period. And it to me, like, icebreakers shouldn't be left to the first week of school. The relationship building stuff has to happen throughout the entire course of the year. Some of my happiest and funniest moments I've ever seen are what kids do on Jackbox games like three months into school. It's some of the most fun I've ever had. So I I highly encourage people just to play some games every now and then. Incorporate as much as possible. And and I think in terms of in terms of what makes what makes school like a

Speaker 2 safe an intellectually, socially, like physically safe environment for kids, you have to meet those criteria for them to perceive that this play is also safe. Does that make sense? Like, they're not gonna be themselves in that jackbox environment and, right, build that relationship to right, as as a classroom community, you know, unless you have those things in there as well. So it's kind of that symbiotic relationship in the sense that, well, the play and the games help make those spaces intellectually, socially, physically safe places where they can, you know, learn sort of the the social norms and rules of how we're all gonna get along in those spaces while at the same time then, like, then those spaces are safe to take other risks, you know, in maybe more academic ways if when you need kids to do those later on as well. So so I'm not saying it should be, you know, like a like leverage or or a quid pro quo, but, you know, we we can't disregard those factors in terms of creating spaces that kids want to be involved in and want to protect as their own and to, like, make those social communities their own. And maybe, Chris, like this this goes into our next topic as well, which is that taking action toward community involvement because it's not just about building those communities within your classroom, but actually building connections to outside those four walls. Yeah. So I think the other part of that, again, I'm thinking about the self determination theory, is that relevance and connectivity piece to that as well, which is not just kids seeing their work as, say, validated in in an academic sense via grades or points or teacher praise or whatever, but actually seeing and being involved in a connection to, like, that adult world outside of school or what we might call like the real world. Right? You know, reflecting with kids and getting them to think about what community connections did they miss out on. So whether that was school or whether that was at home as well because I think a lot of families, if if you're distant from the people, not necessarily in your nuclear family but but your extended family, you might not have seen them for a year at a time, you know, until the vaccines rolled out, until things got a little bit better in the spring and and maybe now we'll be in a place where where that might not be so safe to get together again for the holidays even. I think in my own context and situation where my kids now have celebrated two pandemic birthdays, you know, each and each one of those has been really hard. You know, you make do, but you you understand that there is like a loss that's there. And when you when we go back and look at those photo albums or or talk about this time, that's going to be a really difficult time for me to process as a parent is just thinking about how much harder it made those kinds of celebrations that we took for granted. And for some people it was you know last years with say elderly parents or grandparents. You know I feel for families who have had to delay celebrations of life and funeral services for for for COVID reasons. So, right, it's about processing all of those, not to be a downer, processing all of those negative emotions as well and trying to rebuild them, think is the point, right, Which is to say, you know, how how can we how can we make schools a place where where that is that is validated? And what can we do to connect students back to those spaces that, you know, need to be rebuilt?

Speaker 1 In terms of that, like, connection piece, whether it's, you know, maybe you're going out to a a a park or a historical site, a historical site, or maybe it's just some kind of local space, maybe it's a person, like a nonprofit or a change maker, a community of person, government official. The more folks that people talk with that are not people that they see every single day in the building that are from their local community, the more attachment they feel to that space, and the more likely it is that they will try to make that space better. One of the most concerning notions to me is that many schools treat their space as a space to escape. As in, like, I wanna get to a better place than where I'm at right now, instead of centering the idea of we need to make this space better. I teach in an area that historically is not so great, socioeconomically. One of the activities we do every single year is we take kids on a walking tour of the community and show them all the really cool things that exist there because there are a lot of really awesome things and cool local businesses and really cool people. And that's a eye open experience for many of these kids who tell me they have literally never walked downtown in that space before, which is mind boggling to me because they live five miles away. So the more we expose our students to those spaces and those people, the more of a connection they feel both to the community and to their school. One more note about the classroom connection piece. I think about recent obsession with devious licks, which is kind of a meme, but it's a real thing where kids are destroying spaces that they are in because they don't see themselves in those spaces. You don't see kids tearing up their own houses. Like, they're tearing up a space that they do not value, that they don't care about for social media attention. And I I think that when we build spaces where people actually feel connected to it, you would never it doesn't make any sense out of that context.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That that is such an interesting connection because it it does go to show kind of where where that value center has shifted perhaps necessarily as a result of the pandemic. You know, a lot of the feedback that I've gotten from kids was that, you know, they they they see in themselves that they spent a lot of time on social media and that that part of their social experience of the pandemic was kind of on necessary overdrive. You know, was the only way that they could connect with their friends. And so now that we're now that we've shifted back to, like, a physical space where schooling is happening, maybe maybe that I don't know what to call it. Like, that moral or that social center hasn't shifted with it. You know, usually, schools are places of, I don't I don't I don't know, school spirit or some kind of some kind of center of responsible responsibility, right, of the community. So that is interesting to kind of see DeviousLicks perhaps as like an offshoot of which spaces are are valued. Right? Getting getting the clout in that social media space post god, post pandemic, mid pandemic versus, right, valuing those physical spaces

Speaker 1 at the same time there and wondering just if there's some tension there. Yeah. I I think that's a good segue into our third action that we could take, which is towards social emotional learning. There was already a serious, serious, serious problem with socio emotional well-being of adolescents and young people prior to the pandemic. And the pandemic has made everything worse. There was a survey. Two thirds of parents reported that their children experienced mental or emotional challenges in 2020. That ranges from social isolation to suicidal thoughts. A third said that these struggles were worse during the pandemic. Teenagers in general have higher increased stress levels than ever before, more so than adults in many cases. And school is a place where these students are spending, in many cases, the majority of their life at any given point because of they they might work on it at home. They might think about it at home. They might have things that are coming up. They might be involved in extracurriculars or clubs. So building a space that both connects to the community has play, has transparency, where we focus on other progressive notions like humanized assessment pieces, etcetera, and discipline. That has implications for how students see themselves treat each other and their stress levels. Something very odd to me about the idea that you should be stressed out about school. I understand why you're stressed out about school, but it's odd to me that we've gotten to the point where it's a given and it's like a thing that everyone seems to be facing. We basically recommend that instead of exclusively focusing on mindfulness, which is a good idea in theory, things like giving students tools to decompress, teaching them about social emotional learning, even things like yoga and stuff like that, that's perfectly okay. But we also have to recognize what structures in school are causing these problems to begin with. For example, high stakes assessment, homework, bullying, competition, grades, how the teacher treats their students, etcetera. We need to be focusing on the problems that cause these things and not solely offering this very faux style solution to the problem that we're creating. It reminds me of what's going on right now in my corporate America, where you'll have like these conferences and super cheesy videos and things to make you feel good about working at a corporation that at the exact same time is underpaying you and treats you like crap. Like, there there are underlying problems that we're facing that need to be solved before we move into the mindfulness piece. Right. And and what it does too is, I mean, it it has adults

Speaker 2 abdicating responsibility for creating healthy spaces for children and then just puts the burden on children to, you know, yoga or mindfulness their way out of those situations, which that's not necessarily healthy either because we want kids to be present and active and engaged. It shouldn't be the case then that if kids encounter a stressful environment that we just say, oh, hey. You know, practice your mindfulness techniques. We also want kids to be advocates too. So when we partner with them to help create those healthy changes for our earlier conversation ten minutes ago, those help create healthier spaces too because, right, kids know that their agency is being valued and the school and the classroom is gonna be a safe environment for them. Yeah, certainly adults need mindfulness techniques too to overcome healthy amounts of stress and persevere. But schools should really take drastic results to diminish the need for those

Speaker 1 inside the walls of school. And we list off this would include things like open note assessment, being able to retake any assessment as needed, considering to eliminate homework extremely less than the amount that you give, establishing cooperative community norms that encourage team building and safe spaces. That one hits home for me. This year more than ever, we've had many issues with political beliefs at school on both sides of the aisle and this kind of, I guess, tribalist style belief, where folks are bringing in what they're hearing from their families, whether it's on the left or on the right. And it's causing social divisions at school, which is being we find that replicated throughout society right now, but it's it's a serious problem, because people can't get along in the same classroom anymore. And we we need to find ways to make that a cooperative safe space. Also, things like eliminating grading altogether, as well as doing an equity survey, which we link one of those in there, where you just hear from students how safe do they actually feel. We need to both level with kids, be transparent with kids, and change things in our classes to help foster those connections, and build a safe caring space even if that means that we need to set academics aside. And a point I wanna make to to highlight that is that this is all the exact opposite of what's being recommended. The the learning loss crowd, the folks that are putting all this money into schools do not want that to occur because they want are spending all of their money on schools buying test prep software, which there is no way that you're going to be focused on increasing standardized test scores, taking more map assessments, figuring out someone's reading level, and still be able to foster those social connections because you need to focus less on academics typically to make that occur. And at least in my context, this year more than ever, we've had kids getting pulled out for, doing like reading assessment. We've had kids getting pulled out for, various different diagnostic things. We've taken additional like pre prep, testing. Just like everything that could potentially disrupt the learning environment has occurred. Kids don't like those things. They do not like getting pulled out of class to do those things. I'm not saying that it's not important to figure out if a kid can't read very well and that you shouldn't help them. But the way that we do those things has to be changed so that it is a caring environment. Yeah. Well what the alternative is is that schools become

Speaker 2 about feeding pigs and weighing them in regards to standardized assessment, right? So then schools just become the place where they go to get weighed if that makes any sense. And yeah, I don't know I don't know if the sort of the abattoir sort of metaphor is is working real good there but you can see how that would not make school a very pleasant place for kids to want to go to. If it's just the place they know that they're going to go to be measured, weighed and evaluated in those measures. They're going to learn to find social and intellectual value you know elsewhere. So I think there is a certain portion not just necessarily of learning loss proponents or whatever but I think of the American public in general who kind of disregards that seven hundred thousand people have died more than in the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic. More than That doesn't seem word combined. Yes. Yeah. But also that we're still in the midst of that and kids still can get sick. I've had I've had five students in the last week who are out with COVID positive tests. My daughter has has been exposed and and I was just telling Chris that I got off the phone with my with my family and there's two positive tests in in my extended family for people who are double and triple vaxxed and have otherwise been careful. So again, not not that this is very relevant to the classroom side of this too, but the the more recent data about this is that even shown that a hundred and twenty thousand American children have lost a parent or a caregiver to COVID nineteen. So this this rush to normalcy really just ignores the fact that a, the pandemic is still ongoing and and is impacting children and families in in ways that are going to be probably more traumatic than three percent drop in their math score for third grade. So, yeah, it's it's hard not to get a little bit bitter and and pessimistic for me. I don't know about about you, Chris, but but I do I I I had that sense of resentment about people who want to push us back into perhaps schools and structures that are unsafe, that wanna have debates about whether masks are useful in environments where kids and adults are are dropping like flies and testing positive. And then children have caregivers who are dying. So every day we're burying thousands of people in The United States. It's hard to kind of see where our value set lies. Is it in pursuing some amount of test scores, or is it about actually valuing the lives and safety of children? And I think there's not a better case then for the next page. I think it's page 45 in the Learning Loss handbook, which deals with that topic of creative noncompliance. This is something that I think has has been more vital than ever as the Department of Education and, you know, representatives in the current administration have have doubled down on testing and of recovering learning loss, I think really the pathway towards healthy classrooms and classroom communities and schools is through grassroots teacher effort, which a lot of times is gonna involve you going against the grain and not necessarily doing everything that you're told because well, you know, they are chasing a certain set of metrics. If you're being responsive to students that are in front of you and you can bring the receipts to show how, you know, they they feel safer, they feel more connected and then obviously to support the student learning component in that too, I would really struggle with a system that would look at that and say no, the this, that, and the other thing is more important than keeping students safe and happy and healthy. So what we have on this page is sort of a what's established kind of risk level kind of going from from low risk kinds of activities, say, to to high risk ones. And and on the low risk side, I mean, are there are things like what Chris? What what could be a low risk creative noncompliance act activity for teachers?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And before I even mention it, defining low risk is kinda like determining your relative context of being able to implement a drastic, quote, unquote, action in your class. Because if you're, like, a first year teacher or maybe, an administrator has spoken to you a bunch about what you've been doing and you're kinda, like, on their radar, you probably don't want to be in a circumstance where you're going to get wet, like, laid off. Although I think it's worth asking yourself, like, well, if it sucks this bad, is it worth just getting laid off and looking for another job? I think that's worth asking those questions. It's also worth recognizing that, like, not everyone could just quit their job. So in the meantime, a low risk action would be, like, maybe day to day there is something that goes on that's so minuscule. I think about things like dress code. Is is anyone really going to be able to trace back to you not enforcing a hoodie policy or a hat policy in your class? Maybe it's something really simple like just listening to student concerns. Even if you know you can't act on them, at least you can be that person who knows that information. And you can tell kids flat out, like, hey, I don't really have power to change this, I just wanna hear about what's going on. And you can be that that outlet for them in a a more oppressive, space. And that kinda builds on the last one, just creating those safe spaces. It's establishing those community norms. It's about speaking with kids about how they're doing. It's about playing games and doing things day to day where students feel like they like your class and they're safe in your class. They might not like the subject at all. I get that all the time. Being someone who teaches things on computers, a lot of kids hate computers. They don't like computers. And even by the end of the class, they still don't like computers. So they tell me flat out, yo, I hate your class, but I like you. I I like I hate your subject, should say. But I like you and I like your classroom. That to me is what you can do. If you don't have a lot of power, you start by refraining from anything too drastic and you take those small steps to make things better. A couple more would be doing that research so you know that you can take on something a little bit more. It's it's not easy. You have to really know what you're talking about in order to make these changes. It can't just be you walk in and hope that it works. There's a lot of research to support the things that we're talking about. And you can find all we we did the legwork. You can find it on our website. We have a lot of that research there for you to check out and to read, and there's a lot of amazing authors. You can listen on this podcast, for folks to listen to as well as many other places. And then finally, it would be finding ways to build up your social and political capital, whether it be by connecting with families or by connecting with students or by doing more things for the school. Make yourself so intertwined within the school system that they can't afford to lose you even if you are a little bit kind of off your rocker with the ideas that you're pressing. The more clubs you do, the more, committees you serve on, maybe you have a union, you're involved with them, etcetera, etcetera. The the more things that you, find yourselves doing, yourself doing, the less that can really happen to you and the more you can get away with. Right. It's it's about

Speaker 2 evaluating and identifying your relative power and privilege inside your systemic context and then leveraging that to the extent that you can. So it could be as simple as something as, you know, if if you're gonna enter into an an ungrading kind of scenario with with kids and you have to report grades at the six and maybe twelve weeks, eighteen weeks, you know, every quarter or whatever you have to do, communicate with kids and parents what that's gonna look like, but then maybe only report grades as you're, like, systemically obligated to do so. You know? Just so that way you're, you know, you're you're not, say, breaking the the policy that's gonna that's gonna get you fired right off right out the gate. But, right, you're humanizing your classroom perhaps in a in a in a small or significant way that's gonna that's gonna have better outcomes for kids, but, you know, might not fit into the letter or the spirit perhaps of of the the board policy or the the the rules and policies that you're trying to change. Exactly. And I think too, it's it's worth questioning

Speaker 1 how much risk actually does exist on these things and how much is it just we feel like there's risk in doing these things. Like, is anyone really going to care if you walk into your class tomorrow and play board games? Like, is anyone actually going to say anything to you? I'm, for better or for worse, always shocked by the level of no oversight that exists in the classroom. And no one seems to ever notice or care. I don't know if that's the case just in my context, but from speaking with a lot of other educators that incorporate different disciplinary techniques, maybe they get rid of homework, maybe they focus a lot on like students, managing their social emotional well-being, which takes away from those traditional standards, etcetera. No one really ever gets much pushback. I think part of that is too, like, what's the administrator going to do? Like, are you gonna get cited for saying that, hey. I wanna focus more on a cooperative learning, so we did cooperative learning techniques today. Like, it's it's it seems ridiculous to me that that could even be written down. If it did get written down, you can have a a fight on your hands. Like, I think most people would be in your wheelhouse, especially, again, if you communicate clearly to to families about what you're trying to do. And that builds into, you know, what are the more high risk actions. Well, it's it's actually changing the system. It's like walking in one day and saying, hey, I don't really care too much about the standards in this unit. So tell me what you wanna learn about. Here are some guidelines on things I know I might need to do, but it's kinda up to you if you think those things are important or not. Like, that's a radical action. But there are districts that do that. There are teachers that that take that step and and they try it out. Or do you just say, maybe you have a a PLC that requires you to give homework, like everyone has to go a certain amount of homework and you're just like, I'm not gonna give homework anymore. And you just do it and then see what happens. Again, the more, social and political capital you have, the more you could probably get away with that. There's always that one teacher in a building. No matter what school we go to, there is always that teacher who kinda does their own thing. And the goal is for that to be you, the person that just no one really, messes with and they are just making it work. And I think that's that's a cool place to be. So one of the last pages,

Speaker 2 like how can you make this actionable for for you and for your building? How can you present those ideas to administrators? So And we just have some space in here for you to so to be able to address these kinds of ideas within your own context because there is gonna be a lot of money and weight tied to these test scores. And I think bringing admin to the table who particularly could be amenable to these ideas, what could you do instead of focusing on tests and how can this address some of the broader loss? How can you maybe start a parent forum where they can come and talk about how schools should be addressing things like social emotional learning in the classroom, and then how you can bring this learning loss handbook to bear in your PLC conversations. And how can you push back then or band together, rather, to push back on how you can band together to push for positive change. There's too many buzz in there. And then, of course, you know, it's probably not gonna be feasible that we're gonna be able to eliminate testing altogether. So for example, I mean, I teach an AP class and part of the incentive of that class is, of course, taking an AP test in May. So it's really about sort of balancing out those those those various incentives in your classroom. Mean, kids want to do well on AP tests, but also recognizing at the same time that that that's not gonna that's not gonna get everyone to the place that they need to be emotionally, socially, in in a community sense either. So yeah, so that's what this last page is about. It's just a space for you to reflect on how you can use the ideas in this handbook to reframe that notion of learning loss for the the people who have power influence in your building. And then if that's you, how can you wrangle the coalitions in your context to allow those things to happen? So, you know, Chris, you mentioned earlier, the goal is to kinda be the person who is off doing their own thing. And and I think, you know, in my context, I'm fortunate enough to to have the power and privilege to to be kind of that person. And a lot of these experiments, even in my PLCs, have been initiated as a result of me requesting, like, a brief pilot program. Like, hey. Can I pilot this for a semester or for a year? And, you know, I'll make some tweaks to those programs, but it's never been the case that then I go back to doing the same old thing that was done before. So, you know, my practice has diverged a lot from what what is more traditional kind of risk averse PLC practice just because I've asked, hey, can I try this out for a semester? And or maybe make that the focus of your, you know, your your teacher professional development goal or whatever kinds of goal setting programs you have to do. I've made PBL my goal for that for the last several years and that's allowed me to keep, you know, growing PBL in my standard kind of required content courses which I think is pretty cool. So anywhere where you can use the existing structures to kind of support the changes that you wanna make is is probably for the better.

Speaker 1 And that kind of brings us to the the final part which is just recognizing that there are a lot of outlets for you to learn more about these things. But a word of note, the frustrating part of this whenever we talk about the how of progressive education is there is not a step by step model. Anyone who is trying to sell you an acronym on how to do these things or like a step by step thing defeats the entire purpose behind progressive education in general. It can't be standardized. It's all entirely dependent on your context. So there's not gonna be anything that's just like this works. If you walk into your class and say, hey. I learned on this podcast that you all wanna play Jackpot's game, so let's just do it and then all the kids hate it. That's not saying that progressive education doesn't work. It's saying that that activity does not work with your kids and that's not what they wanna do. Ultimately, the how is being transparent with kids, figuring out what they want to do, and then making those changes based off of that group. Which means it also might change year to year. One of my biggest struggles as a teacher is recognizing that every single year, the kids wanna do different things. And some of the things that I like doing go away. And that's that's that's perfectly okay. Some of the resources that we offer, include a bunch of articles on learning loss. So getting back to our part one discussion that dive more into that, especially Akhil Bello's work, I think is quintessential in understanding what this movement is. And then we offer resources surrounding free play, community connections, and social emotional learning that back up doing those practices as well as give you some ideas on what kids might wanna do. I've typically in the past just given students these resources and said, hey, here's what some cool folks are thinking about in education. What do you think about these things? Are these things that you would wanna do? And then they say, it looks like too much and I don't wanna do it. Or they'll say, hey, it looks pretty cool. We should try doing that. And then we develop that together and make that work. So I think that any way that we can just give kids these tools and say, hey, is this a good idea or bad idea? The better. And then finally, we offer a bunch of resources at HRP. We obviously have this learning loss handbook. We also have a bunch of things surrounding like ungrading, path to purpose finding, interviews and podcasts with all the folks that pretty much appear in this, handbook and a ton of research that backs up doing these practices with your students so that way you don't feel lost. And that that kinda summarizes that everything. My my final thought would be that I think it's perfectly okay to recognize that this year is probably the hardest year yet when it comes to being a teacher. And taking the time to listen to a super long podcast or to dive into a handbook or try out new things with your students is a lot. You would be a certain kind of person that would do that. So recognize that we're here to help you as best as we can. You can always reach out to us. It's chris@humanrestorationproject.org or nick@humanrestorationproject.org or just reach out via our website. We're more than willing to help you do things in your class. And recognize too that we deal with the exact same stressors. We are in that exact same place even though we try doing these things as well. It's hard. It's hard being a teacher and there are some things that need to change on the teaching level as well to make doing this work more possible. So recognize we're all in this fight together and we will make it happen to the best of our ability. Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects podcast. I hope 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.