K12LEADERS

Category: K12Voices

  • More Than Just A Month: Teach Inclusive History All Year Long

    More Than Just A Month: Teach Inclusive History All Year Long

    Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May is an important time to celebrate the rich cultures and invaluable contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. However, inclusive representation in the curriculum should not be limited to just one dedicated month out of the year. It is crucial for students of all backgrounds to learn accurate and comprehensive histories and perspectives year-round.

    Traditionally, the narratives and experiences of minority groups have been marginalized or left out entirely from mainstream teachings of history and literature. This glaring omission does a disservice to students by denying them a full understanding of the diverse tapestry of the American story. An inclusive curriculum empowers students to see themselves reflected, builds cross-cultural understanding, and provides a more honest account of the past and present.

    Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month offers an opportune model for how educators can weave diverse voices and stories into their teaching throughout the year across all subject areas.

    By making inclusive education a consistent practice throughout the year, students gain a more nuanced understanding of the diverse mosaic that comprises American society. Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month celebrates important cultures and narratives, while also serving as a powerful reminder that this work should be continual, not confined to just one month out of the year. This holds true for all ethnic and diverse groups.

    Here are some ideas to bring more AAPI inclusive histories into K-12 classrooms:

    – Read children’s books featuring Asian American protagonists and folktales from Asian cultures

    – Teach students about the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact

    – Discuss the Japanese American incarceration during WWII using age-appropriate resources

    – Analyze primary sources from Asian American activists and leaders

    – Invite Asian American community members to speak about their experiences

    – Research Asian American contributions to arts, literature, and music

    – Study the legacy and modern relevance of the Vietnam War from Southeast Asian perspectives

    – Examine the Asian American court cases and their influence on civil rights and dismantling segregation

    – Read works by contemporary Asian American authors

    – Analyze how media representation of Asian Americans has evolved over time

    Additional resources for all grades:

    PBS Learning Media

    Edsitement

    Posted by: Dr. Kathleen A. Dawson

  • And the Voice of the Educator Rang Through the Halls- Our FETC 2024 Round-up!

    And the Voice of the Educator Rang Through the Halls- Our FETC 2024 Round-up!

    There’s stiff competition among the winter education conferences… TCEA, TASA, and AASA are all within a couple of weeks of each other, and FETC 2024 seemed to anchor this year’s series with the energy we expected pre-COVID ahead of the more regional conferences that pick up in March, like California’s League of Educators.

    While I think everyone who attended last summer’s ISTE would agree that the attendance and energy was back to “pre-COVID” levels, it seemed to me that everyone was still a little surprised to be back among <all> of their colleagues. And there was still plenty of conversation around the future of “the conference” format.

    And it feels like we’re starting to move on from the “will this conference survive” conversation and into conversations that we go to these conferences for… This year my conversations with solution partners seemed to focus more on the “voice of the educator” than in years past. Perhaps that’s a result of our having the chance to talk face-to-face again, but regardless it’s a great step forward!

    We all know the pressures schools and districts are under on a daily basis… serving the immediate needs of the students and community make it very hard to drive innovation or streamline essential processes.  And we’ve long recognized that solution partners are essential components of the K12 ecosystem to help do exactly that.

    Too frequently, though, we are approached by vendors who seem to have come up with ideas in a bubble and with little or no idea of how their solutions might work (or not) in daily practice within a school or classroom.

    Both educators and solution providers this year seemed to be aware of this, and conversations gravitated to that theme quickly.  Here are a few highlights:

    Teaching students’ future selves

    Backed by several National Science Foundation grants, and developed out of Woods Hole Oceanic Institutute , Scoutlier was designed by educators for educators and addresses the core issue of keeping learning relevant and manageable for students.  Their CEO, Brandy Jackson, is herself a teacher as are the majority of Scoutlier’s staff.

    Everyone at Scoutlier has personally had to answer the question “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” as they stare back into the faces of students frozen by not knowing how to start on a problem they don’t really care about.

    A free platform that plugs into Google Classroom, Canvas, and any other LMS, Scoutlier answers both of those questions, and makes learning more manageable for kids, and teaching easier for teachers.

    Scoutlier has 2 components. The first, EngagED makes it easy for teachers breakdown assignments into a manageable processes, helping students see a path of small steps that brings them to their goal.  Based on the experience of every teacher on staff, that is a game changer for many students.

    Second, CareerConnectED leverages AI to find real-world examples that answer the question “When are we actually going to use this in real life?”

    As Jackson says, “You’re in front of your algebra class talking about the exponential decay formula to kids who are going to be going into 20 different fields… how do you give each of them an example of why that formula is relevant to their future selves?”

    Reaching students (and teachers) where they are

    Another example of user-centered design that could only be discovered through the voice of educators comes from Lightspeed, and the release of their new Cascadia system. 

    Cascadia is a networked classroom audio system that has found the intersection of instruction, classroom management, school communications, and student safety. Lightspeed was only able to design Cascadia by listening to all of their district stakeholders and understanding that both teachers and students may need help being heard at any given time.

    Engaging with the “voice of the educator” is a big commitment… To work it must be a 2-way conversation.  Ask your customers all the questions you want, but if you don’t answer them a company might not get another chance.

    Lightspeed’s approach is 2-fold. First is their Lighthouse Customer program which serves as a valuable platform for ongoing feedback, allowing educators to test new features and share insights on the effectiveness of Lightspeed’s solutions. By involving educators directly in the development process, Lightspeed ensures that their products, like Cascadia, are not just tech solutions but practical tools that truly address the concerns of the education community.

    The second is a commitment to salesforce training… While salespeople can certainly cause some anxiety for educators, Shaun Fagan, SVP of Product, says Lightspeed’s product team meets monthly with sales to gather feedback from the field, and that they’ve actually trained salespeople to ask better questions during the sales process to help keep that line of communication open.  The result, says Fagan, is a communication solution that is mobile, simple, and immediately available to a teacher wherever they are in the classroom or building.

    The greening of device management

    Another avenue for communication, that’s particularly effective at conferences like FETC, are informal customer focus groups.  There are so many social options around venues like Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center that with a little coordination, an après-event social can be a relaxed way to discover the real issues on educators’ minds.

    MicroReplay, a leading provider of device repair services and replacement parts, did just that at FETC this year. Through evening conversations Tani Marinovich, MicroReplay’s VP of Sales was able to discuss the whole range of priorities involved in sourcing a repair partner.

    According to Marinovich, the paramount concern has always been ensuring districts have devices ready and available for their communities around the clock, with the elimination of service gaps being a top priority. However, beyond the imperative of service quality, various other factors occupy the minds of IT directors. During a casual dinner and drinks, Marinovich and the team uncovered other considerations.

    Marinovich explained, “Job number 1 is maintaining continuous device availability, but there are additional aspects to address. For instance, assessing what can be serviced in-house rather than being shipped out, determining optimal sources for replacement components, aligning with environmentally sustainable goals, and evaluating the overall financial return on investment (ROI) are all significant concerns.” She added, “Hearing these insights firsthand is encouraging, as they align with the core drivers behind our daily operations.”

    MicroReplay recognizes that while service quality remains a top priority, the nuanced needs and concerns of IT directors encompass a broader spectrum. By understanding these intricacies, the company tailors its services to effectively address the whole range of concerns around device repair and maintenance, emphasizing efficiency, environmental sustainability, and financial return-on-investment.

    How are the kids doing?

    Along with the distance learning band-aids that got applied during the pandemic, we also saw a burgeoning of teletherapy solutions.

    One of the prominent K12 teletherapy solutions that responded to student needs in the pandemic was eLuma.  I had a chance to speak with their CEO Jeremy Glauser.

    As with many education partners, eLuma started based on personal experience… in this case recognizing that the anxiety Glauser wrestled with in high school and college was far more common that he realized at the time.

    But what’s critical for a partner to serve K12 effectively is recognizing that their initial idea is only a starting point.  To ensure that the educator’s voice remains front-and-center, eLuma pairs dedicated customer success partners with each district as well as running periodic focus groups. This has resulted in to significant responses. 

    The first is their recent expansion of remote services to provide Multi-Tierd System of Supports (MTSS). Glauser shared that many teachers just don’t feel equipped to assess and respond to the vast array of student needs they see every day.

    And the second is to help districts find ways to fund those programs… Glauser continued, “Many districts aren’t sure how to access funding and they welcome guidance for how to apply that to programming that benefits all their students’ mental health needs.” To address that, eLuma provides resources and guidance that help districts understand and take advantage of funding opportunities, a welcome support as has been mentioned in another post (Know Your Audience).

    And forward!

    Maybe there’s a parallel between the future of education conferences and partners recognizing the voice of the educator? The K12 leaders that attend conferences, and the customers that partners serve, are the connection between partners and student success. Making sure those voices are heard loud and clear is something we can all work on… Those conversations are certainly seem to be leading in the right direction!

  • My Summer to Explore Instructional Design

    My Summer to Explore Instructional Design

    I am reflecting and writing about my K-12 public education experience and perspective this summer. After starting my career in finance and management consulting, I have spent 30+ years serving public education in many roles for many types of organizations – as you can see from my LinkedIn profile – linkedin.com/in/jimdflanagan, I also consumed it as a student for 16 years, including public university. And I am a parent of twin boys entering their 14th year of public schooling, including pre-K. Finally, I am the proud son of an elementary teacher and took a year off to volunteer in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms to inform my work. But I am certainly not a teacher, so I continuously cycle my ideas through educators for a much-needed reality check. For all the public education I directly or indirectly consumed and all of the educators I cherish, I’ve always viewed the industry with some skepticism – more as a critical friend than an advocate or cheerleader.

    I’ve observed that we overwhelmingly address change at the state, district, or school level. We change variables such as funding, school size, construction, school choice, governance, standards, course offerings, and staffing. But we spend little effort pursuing changes in instructional redesign based on the science of learning. (The delayed recognition of the science of reading is just one example.) Therefore, school improvements, reforms, and transformations all regress to the mean – if successful. So instructional redesign will be my focus. Along the way, I‘ll reference topics like personalization, differentiation, blended learning, student ownership, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL.) And I’ll explore the potential of edtech, but only as it advances the human relationships fundamental to effective learning. I’ll go deepest on the science of learning, cognition, bias, and critical thinking. How can we design effective teaching and learning without that basic understanding of how the brain works?

    I’ll use two models to ground my inquiry as I explore topics. First, The Instructional Core developed by Dr. Richard Elmore. I’ll ask how any change impacts the student-teacher relationship to each other and content. Early in my career, I did not fully appreciate how social and relational learning is, so I advocated for technological solutions that isolated more than connected. Most failures I’ve seen – especially in edtech – disrupt the relationships between and among humans – teachers, students, parents, mentors, tutors, etc. – instead of strengthening the social bonds. Second, I’ll consider how the proposed instructional practice impacts the lifelong love of learning. Does it degrade or support our innate curiosity and hunger for knowledge and understanding? Too many adults feel defeated by learning and are even skeptical of thinking because of their experience with “schooling.” According to a recent Gallup survey, on average, students give their school a C+ rating in making them feel excited about learning – and ratings decrease as students advance.

    I use K12Leaders as a platform because I believe in the mission and value the community. I welcome any feedback. If you agree, that is fine. But I prize a challenge or a different perspective – especially when accompanied by evidence or research. And additional reading or research recommendations are golden.

  • Fill The Need

    Fill The Need

    In January I was diagnosed with Type 1.5 Diabetes (LADA). I found out because I passed out and then being the superwoman I am, drove myself to the hospital. YIKES, on a bike, right! I am learning how to navigate this diagnoses later in life after picking up many bad habits (body dysmorphia and disordered eating), so it’s taking me some getting used to. Many of you may not know me by name but may have seen me at a Tech & Learning Conference, COSN 23, or The EdTech Poetry Slam ISTE 22 (You can call me the Champ or Amy, LOL). Being presentable is always a high priority for me because as you all know being a woman in the tech field comes with lots of stereotypes and expectations, but being a Black woman in tech leadership comes with extra baggage.

    Unfortunately, on Mother’s Day I was hospitalized due to a diabetic flare brought on by food poisoning. After 4 days, legit 4 days of treating myself at home. I went into the hospital in my “house” clothes; leggings, sports bra, t-shirt, and a bonnet. If you aren’t a minority woman you may not be familiar with the stigma behind bonnets in public, but it is a big issue with respectability politics. I didn’t care, I knew it was a dire situation and it didn’t matter what I looked like, I wanted to survive.

    In the Emergency Room, the nurses and doctors were fantastic, they did what emergency care personnel do, they saved me. I had been throwing up for 4 straight days and could barely hold myself up. They didn’t see a person; they saw a need and they filled it. I was grateful. I was then sent to the ICU to recover because I was severely dehydrated, my kidneys were shutting down, and my pancreas was down for the count. Two amazing nurses took care of me when I couldn’t take care of myself. Even cleaning me up enough for my kids to come in and see me on Mother’s Day with leads and IVs everywhere. But my bonnet persisted. My night nurse was a Black woman, and she knew that I had not done my hair and could not, so she adjusted my crown for me many times. As women we are taught that being presentable is important, so she made sure I was.

    Monday morning the Drs. rolled in to talk to me about my condition. ONE doctor spoke to me kind and lovingly, he spoke to me as if I was a functioning human who could understand. The other THREE medical professionals spoke at me, my day nurse, who happened to be Canadian (she gave me the best chips I’ve ever had) stepped in and said, “She’s a Dr. too, I’m sure she can understand what you all need!” Mind you my Ed.D. is no match for a M.D., but in that moment it was her way of letting them know to respect me as a person. I didn’t even realize what was happening until she called it out. Their tones immediately changed, it was then that I realized I was not presentable, I was a “young-ish Black woman with a bonnet on unable/unwilling to control her diabetes.” I was floored. No amount of degrees, certifications, or connections saved me from being stereotyped in that moment.

    The doctor in question, changed his tone and demeanor immediately. He started asking me questions and trying to gain clarity regarding my situation. I explained I had a great team of doctors; endocrinologist, nutritionist, primary care, gastroenterologist, that I regularly saw since being diagnosed. I explained I was not prepared for what to do if I ever got sick, it had never come up. He called my team and they “vouched” for me. My community showed up for me in a moment that I could not. These professionals saw the stereotype they had for me and not the duty to treat me.

    All of my experience working in cultural competence and equity, my Black Feminisim, my desire to right the world of bias…”failed” me in the moment I needed it most. I know as a Black woman that healthcare is a terrain I need to navigate carefully, but I just didn’t have the strength that day to fight for my health and my dignity as a Black woman. I was worried about what I had done wrong to get so sick, so fast. How could I have prevented this? Am I getting quality care? In the moment, I thought the demeanors were because of the state of my health. I thought the tones were just accusatory of not being mindful of my health and well-being. I forgot about my intersectionality as I fought to grasp how I was going to work with these professionals to get better, I forgot what I was. I got so tangled in my privilege as an educated woman with resources and forgot all they saw was a Black woman in a bonnet with poor health.

    Yet, when I thought I “failed” myself, there was a voice there, a voice willing to speak up when mine was weak and pushed down. The nurse seeing that I need an accomplice, stepped in to do the work I couldn’t do. The work that this “equity voice,” couldn’t do. I learned in that moment that I can’t be my own Superwoman and sometimes I’ll be behind enemy lines and will need cover. That pain stung deep, but it renewed me. It renewed me in a way that I can now fully understand the importance of doing this equity work, despite of and in spite of.

    The work we do in education, in technology, in EdTech, in this community is so needed. We will never know the day or time that our equity voices will be needed. I tell you this story, not for sympathy, but for you to ask yourself a question. “How often are you looking past the person, to see the need?”

    Fill the need today, you never know who is waiting for you.

  • Podcast Share – UEN Homeroom with Dr. Scott McLeod

    Podcast Share – UEN Homeroom with Dr. Scott McLeod

    If you go to ISTE23 in Philadelphia this year, make sure that you make some time for Playgrounds. ISTE Playgrounds are short table presentations made by experts all centered around the same topic.  These interactive sessions help everyone make personal connections to content and give you time to ask your questions to experts who can help you build your understanding.

    Case in point, at ISTE22 in New Orleans, I visited the Coaching Playground with a few of my Utah educator friends. They were coaches in a local district and I took them to this space to explore what coaches in other areas of the US are doing to help their teachers. While they were exploring different tables and listening to the presenters, I found myself at Dr. Scott McLeod’s table where he was discussing the 4 Shifts Protocol. If you are unfamiliar with the 4 Shifts, it is a companion piece to SAMR developed by Dr. McLeod and his colleagues. Where SAMR is a theoretical framework, 4 Shifts gives teachers direct questions to answer about their technology use in their learning environment to connect their pedagogy to their technology use. It provides a structure rather than just a framework. I had not heard too much about the 4 Shifts and immediately dug into Dr. McLeod and his work by asking a half dozen questions. It was great to talk to the direct expert about the content.

    Flash forward ten months, Dani and I had the pleasure and honor to bring Dr. McLeod, who is on sabbatical, to Homeroom to talk about deeper learning, the 4 Shifts, and what is working in schools. The episode was a rollercoaster as Dr. McLeod had a great answer for every point and brought in great research to back up his points. One point that kept cropping into my mind was Dr. McLeod’s work doing site visits to innovative schools across the country. For instance, you will hear him talk about an interdisciplinary school in Colorado that is working on clothes-washing solutions for astronauts. This project includes heavy use of STEM, but also English to document the work they are doing and provide ample backing for their process, CTE for the mechanical processes, and even social studies to understand the impact of prior missions. These schools are doing work that is very small in idea, but deeply expansive in how much they cover per project. Check out the full episode at this link.

    Also, check out Dr. McLeod’s great blog Dangerously Irrelevant, and his podcasts Redesigning for Deeper Learning and LeaderTalk.

  • Talking to Students About Masks 

    Talking to Students About Masks 

    This week our Governor and Commissioner of Education had a press conference about ending the mask mandate in schools. It was all anyone could talk about. However, what was not being discussed was how educators would talk to their students about what happens IF schools have the option for mask wearing. How will we approach the idea that some people will be wearing masks for various reasons and others will not be wearing a mask?

    The conference was scheduled for 10:30 AM, and I decided to watch it with my 5th grade students. Before the conference began, we had a class conversation around masks. I explained masks were the new accessory that became a big trend in 2020! Some people started making them. Others made sure they had ones that matched outfits, while some wore medical masks. We all had them and wore them regardless of our personal feelings about them. We talked about the pandemic becoming an endemic, which were two big concepts for these 5th graders! They recognized we will need to learn to live with Covid in our new normal, which was later confirmed by the Governor during the press conference.

    I led an open discussion about how people can sometimes get made fun of for the clothes they wear, the earrings or shoes they have on, or their hair style. When asked if anyone had been made fun of for these things every hand went up. This was a natural opening to talking about mask wearing and normalizing it. Wearing a mask is going to be part of someone’s identity moving forward, should they choose to do so. It is a human choice and should be valued. Just the same as the person who chooses not to wear a mask. There are also people who have to wear the mask because they are immunocompromised or cannot get vaccinated, so this is something else they need to be aware of.

    In the spirit of Kindness Week, students talked about being nice and having empathy towards everyone regardless of their individual choice. Students also mentioned how they are young, and it might be their parent’s prerogative for them to wear a mask or not.

    In the spirit of Kindness Week, students talked about being nice and having empathy towards everyone regardless of their individual choice. Students also mentioned how they are young, and it might be their parent’s prerogative for them to wear a mask or not. Having an open dialogue with students where we normalize mask wearing before a decision is even made helped students see the bigger picture of how we are transitioning into an endemic.

    As we watched the press conference, students learned there are decisions about mask wearing made at the federal level. The decision to wear a mask on a bus is decided by the federal government, and students heard they will still have to wear one on a bus. Then they listened to state government officials discuss how they are lifting the mask mandate in schools on February 28th. This was followed by an announcement that it was now up to the local government to decide if they would lift the mandate. Our class talked about the different levels of government and decision making. We then dove into a talk about policy. A child curiously asked if our school committee would decide to keep the mask policy even though the state said the mandate would not be in effect at the end of the month. I told him we would have to wait and see what happens.

    I gave the students a few days to reflect on our discussion and press conference. Then I revisited the conversation, reminding them about everyone’s personal choice to wear a mask or to not wear a mask. We talked about ways to approach our classmates. One student said, “It does not matter whether someone is wearing a mask or not. It is their decision and their choice.” Another child said, “Do not treat someone differently because they are wearing a mask.” A student said, “It is their decision to wear a mask just like it is your decision to get your ears pierced or wear something.” A student mentioned, “They might feel safer with a mask. It is their decision. Some parents might want their child to still wear a mask.” “Just because someone does something different than you, they should still be treated with respect,” said another child. “People will have different beliefs, but you have to respect their opinion,” was something shared by a student. “A mask is just an accessory,” said someone else. A student ended the conversation with a person has “their reasons to wear a mask.”

    Students then had an opportunity to email our school committee should they choose to and share either what they learned, what they wanted to see change, or their concerns about what could change. Empowering students to share their voices with local elected officials is a dynamic learning experience that promotes student agency.

    So as everyone begins to make decisions that impact our children, make sure conversations are happening about how to talk to children about these changes.