The Many Titles of Educators

It’s been a great week at SXSW 2023! I had a great session presenting, met Hank Green, had knowing what an “ekphrasis” is come in handy in conversation, saw a magic show and discovered parallels between magic and education, reconnected with someone who taught me over half a decade ago, solve puzzles with deaf participants in Japan over Zoom, and just generally speaking had an amazing time connecting and learning from and with other passionate educators.

Now this is going to sound a bit like my last post, but what’s really been sticking with me is how I’ve gotten to learn from so many educators that don’t just come from a teaching background. I’ve learned from coaches, magicians, game makers, neuroscientists, YouTubers, parents turned school founder, social entrepreneurs, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I have also loved learning from and with teachers while at this conference — a science teacher from Atlanta, an ESL teacher from Chicago, a social studies teacher from Arizona, etc. — but that was to be expected.

I would love to see a learning community where these two groups weren’t so siloed (the “teachers” vs everyone else). Both have different values to bring to the table, but I hypothesize the value would increase if they worked in tandem.

What if you had a learning community where everyone was always partnered when facilitating sessions? Just as a quick example:

• A math teacher and a magician
• A science teacher and a coach
• A language teacher and a restaurant owner
• A social studies teacher and a philanthropist
• An english teacher and an architect
• A music teacher and a neuroscientist

The possibilities are limitless.

Associative thinking is such a key part of how our brain learns. I can only imagine what would happen if we thought about our lead learning facilitators with an associative mindset; pairing different expertise to create unique experiences with easy applications to real world challenges. What I imagine though seems pretty great.

The Value Add of Coaches as Educators

I love going to conferences. It’s easy to feel bogged down in work or stuck on what to write / how to write, but then I go to a conference and it’s simply rejuvenating. 

As I head into day 2, what’s really sticking with me from yesterday is the morning keynote. It might have not been as interactive or imaginative as say the workshop on designing the future of education while role playing as a civilization on Mars in 2096, but the message really resonated with me because the speaker wasn’t originally in the education space at all, she started as a soccer coach. 

Luma Mufleh is the founder of Fugees Family, a non profit advancing educational justice for refugee and immigrant youth. Her journey in this space started when she joined a group of refugee kids playing soccer in the community. After a few weeks playing with the kids she helped them start an official team. Then that team continued to grow and as she learned about their stories and challenges in an education system that was failing them, she decided to open up a school. 

This is just a summarized snippet of Luma’s story, but my take away was how she talked about her journey from coach to educator. She talked about how people didn’t always trust or respect her because she didn’t have a teaching background. Yet as a coach she had an incredible understanding of the importance of teamwork, belonging, overcoming challenges, and pushing past limits.

I’ve been coaching gymnastics since I was 10 years old and still am now almost 15 years later. Yet when I talk about my experience in the education space, my work as a gymnastics coach usually only comes up as an after thought or a fun fact. Hearing Luma talk about her work as a coach was a reminder to me that my experience as a coach is so much more than just a fun fact. 

I practice curriculum building when I create my warm ups and assignment charts and personalize them to meet the different needs of each athlete. I am a mentor and guidance councilor when I notice a kid is having an off day and take them aside to discover they’ve been getting bullied at school and don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I assess and give feedback daily when seeing gymnasts perform routines at practice and prepare them for their competitions. I practice learner-centered pedagogy when I organize moments for gymnasts to practice goal setting and opportunities for providing input on things like their summer training schedule and brainstorming floor music. I even help kids with their basic reading and math skills when we have kids who haven’t learned to read that are trying to sound out the words on the assignment board for the day or kids who haven’t learned about decimals trying to add up their all around score at a competition. 

Coaches might not be traditional teachers, but they are educators. And coaches have more autonomy than the average teacher, so they have been able to prototype and pilot ideas for creating competency based, personalized, open walled learning for decades; this could be a game changing added value perspective to any team working to transform education. 

I’m excited for a world where we think more in the mindset of ecosystems of learning and coaches can be brought into the educator space as equally valued partners in the process of developing youth. 

Leading with Vulnerability

First work trip as a full time staff member of Education Reimagined has taken me to Minneapolis for the first annual Bridgemakers National Conference. This conference has been specifically created to organize youth leaders 18-25 in order to amplify the voices and mentor the leadership of under-served youth to bridge America’s toughest gaps. In short, “Nothing about us, without us.”

Today was the first full day of programing and what I’ve found myself really taking away was the emphasis on leading with vulnerability. Part of why the idea of leading with vulnerability struck me is because this is now the second time this concept has come up so explicitly in an education context for me, and the other time was only earlier this year. While attending a session at SXSW Edu back in March 2022, I hear Dr. Brooke Stafford-Brizar propose the notion, “When we’re most vulnerable is when learning takes place.”

If I’ve learned anything from my years of schooling it’s that when a concept comes up twice, you better highlight it and put a gold star next to the title because it’s sure to be important and come up again.

I found it particularly cool that we didn’t just talk about the importance of leading with vulnerability, but we actually got a chance to start practicing this action as we began crafting our “public narrative.”

Your public narrative lets everyone know where you come from and how your personal values shape the issue you are talking about. Specifically, the youth facilitator broke down a public narrative into 3 steps:

1. Story of Self
2. Story of Us
3. Story of Now

You start by sharing who you are and how your past challenges and opportunities shaped what you value. Then you connect those values to the values of the community as you consider what brought the group together. Finally you connect the community’s challenges and opportunities to the world as you consider the global context that your community is responding to.

As we worked in partners and small groups throughout the day, it was humbling to see everyone sharing so authentically and unapologetically with a room essentially full of strangers. To give an idea of the scope of what was shared: there were stories of youth serving as family breadwinners, surviving childhood abuse, being homeless, and almost going to jail. These same youth are now winning law suits against the state for youth unemployment rights, running non-profits to fight social injustice, influencing millions on social media, and organizing national movements.

No one likes to be defined by their past, but it also shouldn’t be hidden. Our past experiences are unique and valid and influential in shaping who we are today, and that is worth sharing because your context can totally re-frame a situation.

There is often a perception that leaders have to be closed off and can’t afford to be vulnerable, but in reality, vulnerability fosters connection which can be key to mobilizing change.

Next Steps- From Young Learner to Young Professional

Landed in Austin, Texas this week for the annual South by South West (SXSW) EDU conference. I always make sure to blog everyday after a conference, but I realized, it would be a bit strange for me to post about the conference without first giving some other life updates since I haven’t posted since September 2021 apparently…

First up, Trailblazers Issue 9 was published!!! This student-driven magazine about transformative education has been such a big part of my career life over the past 6 years, so it’s crazy to believe that we are now working on our 10th issue, officially reaching double digits! It’s also crazy to think I am finally at the point in my life where it is time to start handing Trailblazers over to the next generation of young learners… We have officially named our new Executive Director who I have been mentoring through the Issue 10 publication process so she can then officially take over for issue 11 as I move into more of a senior advisor role. I will continue to provide advice and feedback as needed, but I will no longer be a driving force in creating each magazine issue.

Part of the reason for this transition is because I will be graduating college in May with a degree in Business Administration concentrating in Leadership and Organizational Management and a certificate in Social Psychology from Georgia Tech.

After graduation, I’m excited to officially announce that I will be working full time with Education Reimagined starting in June! I’ve been a member of the Education Reimagined community since high school and this community is what initially inspired Trailblazers and a big part of what has kept me involved in the k12 conversation throughout college. Timing worked out nicely where they were looking to expand their team right as I was looking to find a full time opportunity, and it just seemed like a perfect fit for my next steps.

If you know me well or follow my blog somewhat consistently, you might recall I was originally looking to go to graduate school in the fall. Specifically, I was planning to go to Finland for a two year masters program and had been working all last summer on applying for a Fulbright Fellowship to make this happen. Obviously I have pivoted from this plan, so here is the short story there:

Timing wasn’t right. Over the past few months since I last blogged, I have had several family members end up in the hospital (they are okay), COVID was yet again increasing rates, international situations became more questionable, I was not selected as a Fulbright finalist, and some of my ptsd from being abroad during the start of pandemic and feeling particularly isolated continued to increase along with anxiety around never having been to Finland before and committing to two years there. All these factors together made me decide it was best to wait on Finland right now. University of Helsinki will still be there if I later get a chance to visit and then decide it really is something I want to do. Furthermore, even if not Finland, I do still plan to go to graduate school at some point in time. Not because I think I need a higher degree, but because I really do enjoy learning and elements of schooling and, assuming I find the right program, I would like the opportunity to further research, discuss, and design education with others similarly passionate about transforming our current paradigm. I also decided, that going into a full time job first would make my eventual graduate school experience better, because right now, I’m still not fully sure what my role is going to be in these conversations on education and I think some time working may help me narrow my interests and talents to make my graduate school experience more focused and productive.

This transition from young learner into young professional has been a very odd transition since so much of my experience in education thus far has been from the perspective of, ”hey I’m providing student voice in this conversation!” My young learner status was always one of my primary self-selling points, and now it’s shifting into something else that I’m still discovering…

With this in mind, I’m excited to see some of this evolution with participating in SXSW this year as I start to age out of my ”young learner” status. So stay tuned for my insights from the conference!

Student’s Thoughts on Online Learning

As I explored ideas posted on the OpenIDEO platform about re-imagining learning during COVID-19, I noticed that there was a lack of student voice in the conversation, and yet students are the primary users of our education system. As a student myself, I’m very aware that at this time of year, when everyone is finishing up final exams and getting ready for relaxing in summer, most students aren’t keen to go on a site like OpenIDEO to continue discussing school right after they finished the year.

So I thought I would lower the entry barrier into this conversation by texting a bunch of my friends (7th graders-college juniors) 3 simple questions to get an idea about their opinions of online learning. I also set up a Zoom chat for those that wanted to go more in-depth on the conversation where we did a more personalized interview and also a brainstorming session in response to OpenIDEO’s three areas of remote learning, equity, and community. Then I analyzed all the responses, found some themes, and now wanted to share on the behalf of those 23 students who contributed.

 

Research Questions

The three questions I asked these learners to respond to are as followed:

1. What’s your biggest frustration/what’s driving you crazy about online learning? 

2. What’s your favorite part?

3. It would be better if…

 

Trends

The three greatest trends were students being:

1. Frustrated by their own lack of work ethic/motivation/focus

2. Enjoying the flexibility in terms of space and time offered by online education.

3 Wishing assignments and syllabi, in general, were more greatly altered to better match an online learning environment.

 

Analysis

As we analyze these trends a bit more carefully, it makes me think of these “How might we” statements for looking towards the future of education:

HMW internally motivate students to show up and participate in school? Teachers currently have less power dominance over students when not physically interacting; typical modes of enforcing attendance and participation such as threats of detention, silent lunch, suspension, etc aren’t feasible in an online environment. Now that these threats don’t exist, students are finding themselves less motivated which leads me to believe that the school work itself and the prospect of learning alone are not intrinsically motivating students. Wouldn’t it be great if students actually wanted to come to school and enjoyed participating in school work? The way to encourage life-long learning is to foster intrinsic motivation to learn – that would be a pretty novel purpose for school if you ask me.

HMW provide flexible learning opportunities post-pandemic? The mid-semester shift to a different learning environment on top of all of the other social-emotional priorities that have arisen due to the pandemic has been predominately challenging; however, the unquestionable best part has been the flexibility it has allowed students with regards to their education. Students have loved being able to wake up late and feel fully rested, knock out classwork while cozy in their beds, and then “get on with the rest of my day doing all the other things I want to do.” The ability to plan personalized schedules and work in a setting of choice has been amazing for so many learners, so now that we’ve seen how much students love this flexibility, how might we continue to provide it upon returning to our schools?

HMW effectively use technology in the classroom? The design for assignments to be better adjusted to an online structure was noted as a frustration, a positive element, and a wishful opportunity. So students loved the teachers that were adaptable and used going online as a way to incorporate new elements to their class in meaningful ways, and they were bored and/or frustrated with those who did not. The difficulties some teachers have had with adjusting to a new technological mode of communication raises an important question about how we can more effectively incorporate technology into our schooling even post-pandemic. What students warn us of though, is that technology can’t just be incorporated just for the sake of saying “I used technology!” It must be incorporated intentionally and meaningfully – there must be a true purpose for why the technology is further enhancing the learning experience.

Beyond the Main Trends

In addition to the primary trends, I found three key sub-trends that emerge when looking at how some of the trends interact with each other.

1. Re-thinking assessment (Responses on test cheating, not wanting tests, wanting more collaboration, and more project work.)

2. Maintain a sense of community (Want more socialization, interaction, and meaningful conversations with peers and teachers.)

3. Use a whole-child approach to education (Frustration with expectations not changing, eyes hurting from so much screen time, new challenges such as moving and schooling with family.)

 

Read More

If you want to read student’s full responses as well as my more in-depth analysis of the sub-trends, I have added two additional documents as attachments on my OpenIDEO post.

Kylie’s Graduating?!?!

It’s honestly so hard for me to fathom that my sister, Kylie, is done with high school and heading off to college at the University of Pennsylvania so soon!!! Sometimes it feels like only yesterday that I graduated. Especially on days like today where soon after I wake up I find myself talking for an hour with friends from high school.

I feel so sorry for Kylie and all the graduating seniors this year that have to miss out on so many special moments associated with ending k-12. It’s hard to imagine high school without those last moments, but I know they have created their own very memorable moments during this time. I’ve loved seeing online all the carpool parades, surprise house visits thanking college counselors, and the artwork done by lower schoolers in celebration of the seniors and their college choices. It shows how strong and powerful a true community is when distance isn’t a barrier for sharing moments together. And that community lasts long after graduation day.

So to Kylie and all the other graduates of the class of 2020, congrats!!! You’ve worked hard and faced some crazy odds these past few months, and now it’s time to celebrate just how far you’ve come and how exciting your journey will be next!

Empathy Seeking

Online learning has been a wild ride… Personally, I’ve had moments where I’ve been frustrated, bored, and even, occasionally, pleasantly surprised by elements that come with school online. Because of this, I’ve partnered with OpenIDEO as a community coach on their current design challenge around reimagining learning during COVID-19. If you have any ideas (tested or half-baked), are looking for new ideas, or just want to express some problem points around our current learning situation I’d encourage taking a look at/contributing to the OpenIDEO site.

I’m trying to do a little of my own empathy seeking because I noticed an (unsurprising) lack of student voices shared on the platform, and yet student stories are some of the most insightful voices we need right now. So I’ve come up with these three quick questions that I’d love people (young learners especially, though I also welcome teachers, parents, parents on behalf of kids, etc) to respond to in the comment section. I’m hoping to take away some trends to be able to share with the rest of the OpenIDEO community to make sure we’re actually ideating for user needs:

1. What’s your biggest frustration/what’s driving you crazy about online learning? 

2. What’s your favorite part?

3. It would be better if…

Furthermore, if you are a student and interested in joining a virtual collaborative discussion/brainstorm session to dive deeper into this topic, I’m hosting a student gathering this Sunday night, May 17th from 7-8pm EST. Use this form to sign up so I can send out the Zoom link.

Thinking on “Leadership”

For an optional seminar I’m attending later this week I have been asked to pre-flect in 250 words about leadership means to me, where I learned about it, and whether I see myself as a leader. So here it goes…

 

I believe leadership is a kind of speaking and listening that causes movement towards a shared goal and larger purpose. It requires a sense of empowerment, unity, and respect amongst a community. When you see people working collaboratively, actively listening to one another (leaning forward, nodding heads, snaps in agreement), and discussing a vision for the future, then you know there is leadership present despite there being an identified “leader” or not. 

There isn’t any one particular place or time that I can attribute to being where/when I “learned leadership.” My opinions have been formed through observation, experience, and thoughtful discussions throughout my life. I was, however, deeply impacted by one particular leadership conversation I had during my senior year of high school when I attended the first annual SparkHouse gathering with the organization Education Reimagined. At this gathering, we, young learners from around the country, spent a few hours distinguishing what leadership meant to us and how we would identify it in a room. I found this activity extremely engaging and intriguing and every year I’ve attended SparkHouse, it’s my favorite conversation. In fact, my first sentence represents the latest outcome of this conversation. 

I do see myself as a leader in some contexts, though I also believe that everyone is a leader if given the right contexts. Everyone has the ability to help move people towards a shared goal through their speaking and listening, and I believe at some point or another everyone has demonstrated this quality.

Class Culture in a Digital Environment

Every class is like it’s own little community, complete with its own culture including values, customs, and norms. Like the policy on going to the bathroom during class, or how comfortable people are with speaking up, or inside jokes that develop, or how loud the room is before class starts, etc. All of these little elements are what makes every class unique despite if the teacher and subject material are the same.

Having only had three weeks of school before the break, I don’t think any of my classes really met enough times to truly establish their own unique culture yet. However, these cultures definitely started to develop and there are usually some consistencies between all classes, but now being online, it’s been very interesting to see how the digital platform has changed class cultures.

In a lot of my classes, we never see each other’s faces besides maybe the few individuals that actually turn their video camera’s on. It’s very strange to not be able to read the room based on other people’s facial reactions and body language and I can tell the lecturers definitely notice this change. Plus fewer people speak out loud to ask questions or make comments, but in some cases, there is actually more participation due to the option to type in the chat versus having to speak in front of the class. The option to share reactions has also been an interesting tool that gives facilitators more direct in the moment feedback and some of my classes have really been taking advantage of that.

It‘s been odd though to not really know the individuals that make up the class, especially in my classes that have chosen to interact through pre-recorded videos; there are online discussion boards, but so many people post under the name “anonymous” that it’s hard to know how many are really participating. This change in participation has also really changed the social part of classes. It basically doesn’t exist, at least not peer-to-peer socialization anymore. There are no longer showing up to class conversations, or bumping into new people you met but didn’t realize you were in the same class, or partner conversations to help better learn the material and the people you’re learning with (ie your community).

The greatest change I’ve noticed is that it seems like everyone values “learning breaks” a lot more in this digital environment. Everyone is concerned with the idea of learning for more than 25 minutes at a time. In some cases, I really appreciate the additional breaks teachers are taking during live video chats and making pre-recorded videos in small segments rather than all at once. Though I had one class today that was only 50 minutes and our TA tried having 2 three minute breaks during this class and it just seemed weird, someone suggested we don’t do breaks next class and pretty much everyone agreed. It’s funny to me because if we were in person together I’ve sat in plenty of lectures that go on for an hour and a half without a break.

Only being a week and a half into online learning, I’m sure there are still many developments yet to come with our online communities, and I’m very curious to continue to see how our new mode of learning affects the culture of classrooms.

We Are One Planet

Today, as part of my work with the Wellington International Leadership Program, I participated in a webinar hosted by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

Planning for this anniversary was clearly intense with hundreds of people around the world organizing to speak out specifically around the need to take action in regards to climate change. And then the pandemic hit…

Guest speaker and founding Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes expressed his devastation and frustration about two years’ worth of work now being illegal to execute in most countries. But what was most inspiring to me, and my biggest take away from the event, was his hope, despite everything, for what this could mean in terms of how we think about global challenges in the future. Hayes’ said it would make up for all the lost work if we come out of this crisis realizing that global threats need global cooperation and collaborative solutions that actually eliminate threats worldwide, because if only some people, some states, or even some countries take action – if it’s only “some” – then there is always a threat of the issue coming back. “We are one planet,” Hayes’ exclaimed, and so we need to work together cross-culturally to make change happen. This goes for all global threats from pandemics to climate change.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t even remember that it was Earth Day this week before I signed up for the event, let alone know that it was the 50th anniversary. I support Earth Day, but it’s never been a holiday I go out of my way to figure out how I can get involved with. But there are other global threats that I more actively work to find solutions to, like access to education and safe water, sanitation, and hygiene options. That’s why this conversation around global cooperation was so powerful to me because it’s relevant beyond the scope of just Earth Day; there are dozens of global threats out there no matter how directly we notice them impacting our lives.

For obvious reasons, the threat of climate change was compared frequently with the threat of Covid19 on today’s webinar. All of the panelists discussed how the virus is impacting their daily operations now and how they expect it to impact the future. A key idea that came up throughout the session was that even with Covid19 until people saw their neighbors rushed to hospitals, they weren’t taking the threat seriously. So the webinar left me thinking: “How might we get people to take threats like climate change and other global sustainability goals seriously when it’s even harder for the average person to visualize the direct impact these threats have on the world and the individual?”

The answer is unclear. However, from experience, we know that when people are actively involved in the process of planning and creating change, they believe in it more and care about pulling society along with them. So really the question is, “How might we get the average person to actively engage in processes to overcome global threats?” This is still a lofty question, and there could be hours spent on unpacking the meaning of “average person” alone, but it’s encouraging to have heard from several social entrepreneurs today who seem to really be thinking about this question daily.

Furthermore, panelist Molly Morse with Mango Materials suggests that there is already a demand for solutions to some of these sustainability threats like climate change. The key for social entrepreneurs to keep in mind is targeting the right market; markets need to be focused and specific that way every user feels that the issue is truly relevant to them as an individual.

So my take away from Earth Day amidst the Covid19 crisis is that no matter your area of passion, global threats exist, demands for solutions exist, and people tackling the big questions to create solutions exist. Now we just need to put it all together by working in collaboration with each other across sectors, political affiliations, and borders in order for change to actually happen. We are one planet – let’s make it one worth living on.