Schoolutions – S1 E1: Engaging Students' Hearts & Minds within a Workshop Structure with Cris Tovani and Sam Bennett
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl, and I am thrilled to introduce you to my guests. Two incredible women that inspire me to be a better teacher every day.
[00:00:21] Olivia: Cris Tovani and Sam Bennett. Cris is one of the original members of PEBC, the Public Education and Business Coalition out of Denver, Colorado, and is currently an internationally known consultant focusing on issues of reading, content comprehension, and assessment in secondary classrooms.
[00:00:39] Olivia: She's the author of five books; I Read It, But I Don't Get It; Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?; So What Do They Really Know?; No More Telling As Teaching: Less Lecture, More Engaged Learning; and Why Do I Have to Read This?: Literacy Strategies to Engage Our Most Reluctant Students. Cris is also a contributor to Comprehension Going Forward.
[00:01:00] Olivia: Sam Bennett is an expert when it comes to the nuances of the workshop model. Sam is the author of That Workshop Book. And a contributing author to Comprehension Going Forward and The Right to Literacy. Sam serves leaders and educators as a learning and leadership coach around the country. Welcome ladies.
[00:01:18] Olivia: I'm so excited.
[00:01:19] Cris: Great to be here.
[00:01:20] Sam: Thank you, Olivia. It's so fun to be here.
[00:01:22] Olivia: So, Cris, I'll start with you. I ask my guests every time. Who inspires you as an educator, as a leader? Who makes you think of education in the way you hope and dream it should be?
[00:01:35] Cris: Well, this is gonna be kind of an old school answer, but I think the person that keeps re-energizing me is good old Don Graves at a late great Don who?
[00:01:45] Cris: I think it made a huge impression on me as a student teacher watching him work with kids on a stage in Boulder, Colorado, and I was just so struck. I'd never seen a teacher listen to kids to learn. And I think that was what was so powerful to me that he followed what they had said to learn about them, to then show them new ways to play with their writing.
[00:02:07] Cris: And I think that, that I think, translates to all aspects for me of, you know, watch what the learner is doing, watch what the learner needs. And so I think Don probably will go down in history for me as, as my all-time teaching inspiration.
[00:02:20] Olivia: Fabulous. Sam, how about you?
[00:02:22] Sam: I know this is gonna sound cheesy, but Cris Tovani inspires me. Her work with kids because I've been in her classroom, I dunno how many times over 20 years, 500 times? A thousand times?
[00:02:34] Sam: And that idea that I am never bored for one second. Because of the connection she makes and the layers she adds, and the way she matches kids and text and the way she just gets kids to sit up and lean forward and their whole heads and hearts into whatever the topic is whether it's refugees in Syria or their first time looking at Moby Dick.
[00:03:02] Sam: It is just magic. I mean, it's not magic. That’s the thing. It's not magic, but it is my very favorite thing.
[00:03:08] Olivia: Sam. It's precision in a way that it's, it's just beautiful to watch and I've experienced it as well now.
[00:03:15] Cris: Okay. I was, I was gonna say…
[00:03:16] Olivia: Who were you gonna say, Cris?
[00:03:20] Cris: You both are too nice. Okay. Full confession. Thank you. You're both so kind. I was gonna say Sam, but then I thought that was too cheesy. But I think Sam is sort of my day-to-day coach and every time I think I've like, you know, figured something out, she gives me my kudos and then she says, okay, but, here's some more ways to get better for kids.
[00:03:37] Olivia: Yes.
[00:03:38] Cris: And so I think Sam is also that, uh, little elf on my shoulder that is inspiring me to, um, keep going and digging in. And not that she's got all the answers figured out, but together we're trying. So…
[00:03:49] Olivia: …and Cris, that's really, this is why I wanted both of you as guests because, first of all, there's a beautiful vibe between you, but you both are…I'll say it magical. With engaging teachers. With engaging leaders. With engaging students. And an issue that I, I know many of us, are bumping up against in education right now is disengaged leaders, disengaged teachers, and students. And you really have some wonderful ideas of what we can do to capture the head, heart, and gut (Sam, those are your words) of each other again.
[00:04:26] Olivia: Cris, your most recent book, Why Do I Have to Read This?: Literacy Strategies to Engage Our Most Reluctant Students, when I read that last summer and have reread it many times since you speak to masks that kids wear that, I also find adults wear them as well.
[00:04:43] Olivia: How do you recognize these masks in classrooms?
[00:04:47] Cris: Well, it was so interesting because that book was turned in before COVID and I really didn't think about, you know, as much as how to recognize masks, but that people wear masks when they're trying to shield themselves or protect themselves from something maybe that they're uncomfortable doing or afraid of.
[00:05:04] Cris: And so when I started thinking about masks that kids wore, it became kind of fun to see the patterns. Were they wearing them because they weren't you know, reading at grade level, were they wearing them because they were dealing with stuff at home? Were they wearing them because they didn't have confidence to kinda speak out?
[00:05:20] Cris: But I think the thing that helped me the most is to look at those masks as being temporary and trusting kids in a way that if they could do it, they would do it. And so it got to be kind of this fun challenge of figuring out, okay, what mask is this kid wearing? Is he angry? Is he apathetic? So if a kid's wearing a mask of apathy, What can I do as a teacher to help him remove that mask?
[00:05:42] Cris: And sometimes it's providing a real-world audience or a purposeful task or maybe the right text that he can access. I think categorizing the different masks went hand in hand with giving teachers some specific strategies on helping students shed those masks. And so my goal was to empower teachers, not to give up on a kid, but to say, okay, what does this kid need to dig back into the really important work in our classroom?
[00:06:07] Olivia: Would you mind naming those masks you just mentioned anger and apathy.
[00:06:10] Cris: Well, I think there's that mask of minimal, um, effort, right? So kids are just trying to get through the class. I think the mask of invisibility, those, those kids that just kinda can hide in the woodwork. And they're the ones that sometimes you overlook or you forget.
[00:06:24] Cris: I think the mask of the class clown, who is great for about the first 30 seconds of class and then you're ready to strangle him. So, you know, they're just these kind of broad categories because I think somebody who's being silly and playing around and being the class clown has different needs than maybe that child who is, um, trying to remain invisible and, and just kind of blend into the, to the woodwork.
[00:06:46] Cris: So just thinking about different strategies to meet different kids. And of course the strategies overlap too. So it's not like there's one-to-one correspondence.
[00:06:54] Olivia: Yes
[00:06:54] Cris: There's, you know, just so many instructional strategies teachers can use once they think about the kid as in a temporary state.
[00:07:00] Olivia: Yes. And Sam, the words that you spoke, I think it was two weeks ago now, about aligning, I remember you stood up very straight and said that our head, heart, and gut need to be connected.
[00:07:14] Olivia: They need to be aligned. And then you are have the circles of engagement and those pieces that you spoke to. I, I have not stopped thinking about them. I'd love for our listeners to hear about them as well from you.
[00:07:28] Sam: Yeah, so I think engagement, that idea of being more sophisticated when we say the word engagement, and for that, the triple Venn diagram to pop in your head when we, anytime we say that word. So it's hard to do without drawing in front of people, but I'll try to be descriptive on the podcast. But think of a triple Venn diagram. So there's uh, not just one type of engagement. There are actually three types of engagement.
[00:07:53] Sam: And so if we think about a triple Venn diagram and we were trying to hit the, the sweet spot, the middle of where those three circles overlap. So the first type of engagement is I think the one that pops in our head mostly when we say the word. And that's behavioral engagement. So that idea of kids do what we ask 'em to do when we ask them to do it.
[00:08:13] Sam: But being in classrooms every day, which I am as an in instructional coach and in schools, that idea that behavioral engagement can also be that understanding of students of why I'm here. I am a reader. I am a writer. I am a historian. I am a scientist when I'm here. So understanding how do scientists spend their days?
[00:08:34] Sam: What are their habits?
[00:08:36] Olivia: Yes.
[00:08:36] Sam: That idea of linked to time and trying to get teachers. To understand that the behaviors and habits of scientists, readers, writers, historians, social activists, whatever it is, that's what we want kids to spend their time doing. Not looking at a PowerPoint and taking notes, because there is no time that readers, writers, scientists, or historians do that.
[00:08:59] Sam: That's not how they spend their time. So kids should not spend their time that way in school.
[00:09:02] Olivia: Indeed.
[00:09:02] Sam All right, so there's behavioral engagement. The next circle over in our triple Venn would be emotional engagement. And emotional engagement, like if we close our eyes and think about it, we can envision kids leaning forward eyes wide.
[00:09:16] Sam: There's that buzz in the classroom and that like electricity in the air. We know it when we see it. But I think if we can be more intentional as educators, if we think about it as a four-square of emotional engagement.
[00:09:29] Olivia: Yes.
[00:09:29] Sam: And this links to all the work as well in equity and also neuroscience. So that idea of kids have a connection to their teacher.
[00:09:39] Sam: Absolutely. There's a little heart on one of the corners of the square student-to-teacher connection where they know each other deeply to teach and learn well. Then there is a student-to-student connection. So if we never release kids to talk to each other and to get smarter about each other and their lives and what they care about.
[00:10:00] Sam: Then you're missing this whole part of emotional engagement. The reason we come to school.
[00:10:04] Olivia: Yes.
[00:10:04] Sam: Right? The reason I'm here on this podcast is my love for the two of you this early Monday morning. Right? There are reasons. Sometimes there are reasons we come and we want kids to come to school for each other.
[00:10:17] Sam: The third corner of that emotional engagement would be student-to-themselves. What do I know about myself and what my skillset is and how I can grow on a day-to-day basis? What do I need? What text, what task, what target, what, what do I need to, um, engage with myself so that I feel smarter, I feel stronger.
[00:10:39] Sam: That school is the place where I get filled up.
[00:10:42] Olivia: Yes.
[00:10:42] Sam: My head gets filled up, my heart gets filled up and my gut gets filled up so that that self-knowledge and that identity I have an identity of as a learner.
[00:10:51] Olivia: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:51] Sam: The fourth, the fourth corner of that four square of emotional engagement is student-to-content.
[00:10:57] Sam: How do we as teachers, structure content in ways where it's engaging and it comes to life, and there are questions that don't have any one right answer?
[00:11:08] Olivia: Yes.
[00:11:08] Sam: So an example of this would be, I was working with a group of fourth-grade teachers and they wanted to do the unit on friendship. What makes a good friend?
[00:11:17] Sam: And I'm like, okay, these guys are fourth graders. They're brutal on the playground.
[00:11:21] Olivia: Yes!
[00:11:21] Sam: It's not about what makes a good friend; it’s why is it so hard to be a good friend.
[00:11:27] Olivia: Ah, yes. Yes.
[00:11:28] Sam: Right? So like, just these little…
[00:11:30] Olivia: adjustments
[00:11:30] Sam: …tweaks.
[00:11:28] Olivia: Yes.
[00:11:31] Sam: Yeah. Where we interrogate the content and make it worthy of people's time, and it's tied to the real world.
[00:11:38] Sam: And I know teachers are feeling just bludgeoned right now with what can be taught and what kind of books and texts can we have in front of kids.
[00:11:46] Olivia: Yes.
[00:11:46] Sam: And, and this is the place where we, we need to have more courage and will to make, to make the world a real place and a sparkly place and a place worth digging in where there's just not one right answer because it's too complex and it's too messy.
[00:12:02] Olivia: It is, and it's setting the kids up for, uh, success if they are able to tease out and have conversations around these questions framed in ways that I love the term, interrogating the content. Really pushing back and critiquing.
[00:12:17] Sam: Yeah. And that's Wiggins and McTighe; that’s not me.
[00:12:19] Sam: The third, uh, part of the Venn diagram is cognitive engagement. So the only way we know if kids are cognitively engaged is what they say and what they make. What tracks in the snow or tracks in the sand (wherever you are) that they leave us on paper? So that idea of the number of minutes of any chunk of classroom time, two-thirds of that time, kids need to be reading, writing, talking.
[00:12:41] Olivia: Yes.
[00:12:41] Sam: They need to leave us tracks and show us what they're getting so that we can figure out what's worthy of their time the next day to get even smarter. So behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. And we're going for that sweet spot as much as we can every single day, every single class period.
[00:12:59] Sam: If kids spend 60 minutes with us, they should feel 60 minutes smarter and more skilled.
[00:13:04] Olivia: I think too, that alignment of one-third to two-thirds, um, and two-thirds of the students doing the work, it, it's a dream to watch and, and observe and coach students that are entrenched in conversations with each other and highly engaged reading, writing, and talking about the work.
[00:13:22] Olivia: Thank you so much for, um, breaking that down. Cris, I'd love to bounce the conversation to you and have you speak to long-term planning components because I think a, a big aspect of engaging learners is to be really meticulously planned. And you are an expert with this.
[00:13:43] Olivia: Will you speak to this for the listeners?
[00:13:44] Cris: Well, I think I'm kind of opposer on the long-term planning. I went years of just kind of planning day to day and it just was frying me. Sam always teases me that when, uh, she first started being my coach, I would ask her how I planned and I said, I just find good texts.
[00:13:58] Cris: And I did. I mean, I was good at finding texts that kids would read, but that wasn't enough to keep them engaged for long periods of time. And so that day-to-day planning was just killing me. When I started going on the road, I had to be a little bit more careful. And I started to think with Sam's help about, all right: What do we want kids to know and be able to do at the end with my own students?
[00:14:18] Cris: And that was where that long-term planning came in. And I think we've noticed patterns that that. In my planning, I was really stealing Four Ts from Expeditionary Learning in a book, Transformational Literacy, by Ron Berger and his colleagues at el. They use topic, target, text, and. tasks. And so those Four T's, I was really trying to develop a compelling topic to hold the skills and standards, and I was trying to align purposeful tasks with targets that were matched assessments.
[00:14:51] Cris: And I tried to find great texts. Sam, through her notes when she would come into the classroom and script what I was saying and what kids were saying, noticed that I was also really looking at workshop model and trying to plan with that two-thirds, one-third in mind and. And what were, what were kids gonna do for two-thirds of that time?
[00:15:07] Cris: Not what was I going to do? That idea of kind of using time more flexibly for kids as well. Some kids maybe needed more time for a task and other kids needed less time. There was this other piece, and I think it was the elementary school teacher that came to high school with me when I switched grade levels, was this idea of just like tending to kids.
[00:15:27] Cris: That idea of a kid walking in the door with the sad face, or a kid with his head on his desk, or a kid just sitting there because he didn't have a pencil. My idea was to try to remove some of those, um, roadblocks so they could get into the important work of reading and writing and critically thinking.
[00:15:43] Cris: And that idea of just tending to kids. Like, what, what do you need right now to dig into the work? Do you need a different text? Do you need a pen? Oh, here's a pen. You know, are you hungry? Oh, okay. Well, I have, you know, I have an old breakfast bar at my desk. You can have that. But just kind of thinking about being polite and what would we do if somebody came to our own house and needed something.
[00:16:01] Cris: Right?
[00:16:03] Olivia: Yes.
[00:16:03] Cris: But I think now with COVID…I think kids are gonna need more tending than ever before. Right? Because they've had so much trauma and there's been so many difficulties. So I think another way that Sam and I organized, Why Do I Have to Read This, was through these Six Ts. How can we long-term plan with these Six Ts to anticipate students' needs?
[00:16:22] Cris: And beat them at the punch before they disengage. But then also using those Six Ts on a daily basis as a formative assessment, trying to kind of tweak our plans to pull more kids in. So if a kid was off task today, the text was too hard, so maybe he just needs a new text or a kid was off task today because he didn't see the purpose in the target, or the target wasn't clear.
[00:16:43] Cris: Maybe I need to go back tomorrow and clear that up. It became another way of helping me not fry. Just thinking about day-to-day, but also some ways to anticipate students’ needs that'll think about. All right. Hmm. So-and-so was off task today and didn't get very much work done. Which one of those Ts would maybe help him dig into the work tomorrow?
[00:17:04] Cris: So it really just became a planning structure on how to use time.
[00:17:07] Olivia: I think too, Sam; it was so beneficial for the group of teachers that we are working with and leaders to hear about workshop structure because I think often when we hear workshop, we think elementary, we think K-5 education, and yet I think the workshop structure is an invaluable way to teach students across content areas.
[00:17:33] Olivia: I'd love for you to speak to your vision of the workshop structure at secondary levels.
[00:17:38] Sam: Yeah. The most fun thing about this work is I didn't make it up. It came from the most compelling classrooms, right?
[00:17:45] Olivia: Yes.
[00:17:45] Sam: I work as a researcher every single day.
[00:17:48] Olivia: Yes.
[00:17:48] Sam: And so in the classrooms where there was that electricity going through the air, I would just linger and go, okay, how did this happen?
[00:17:57] Sam: And I am ultimately practical. That idea of Cris saying, okay, when, when I planning day to day mm-hmm. I, I wanna quit. But if I plan in these chunks and going towards a worthy goal, all of a sudden I can focus more on kids than I am what I'm doing.
[00:18:14] Olivia: Yes.
[00:18:14] Sam: So what are the kids gonna do tomorrow instead of, what am I gonna do tomorrow?
[00:18:19] Sam: Right? That becomes the most compelling driving question. When I was in classrooms and in the PEBC, it was all these teachers striving towards this idea of how do we empower students to be the kind of readers, writers, thinkers, historians, scientists we wanna share the world with? So spending time in these classrooms, I just started to notice this balance, and I would literally track the number of minutes of students reading, writing, talking, problem-solving, and teachers talking at the entire group.
[00:18:52] Olivia: Yes.
[00:18:52] Sam: And time and again and again and again, there was this two-thirds, one-third balance.
[00:18:59] Sam: The key to that is if you're in a 60-minute lesson, it's not necessarily 40 minutes back-to-back. And the other thing that is a misconception of workshop is the one-third of time that teachers are talking, that's one-third to the entire class.
[00:19:14] Sam: You're teaching all the way through the workshop in one-on-one conversations conferring one in small group. The numbers of minutes only go in your column if it's one to whole group where you're talking at kids. So that idea of talking at kids versus talking with kids and how you know what kids know and are able to do, which goes back to that cognitive engagement and that you can only really tell small group and whole group.
[00:19:41] Sam: And that's how we don't have learners slip through the cracks. I know you asked me to focus on secondary teachers specifically. Secondary teachers sometimes get into teaching because they love content and then they come to love kids. Right? But it's back to my Venn diagram, the overlap of content and kids where the sweet spot is when I can help secondary teachers study kids.
[00:20:03] Sam: I'm like you already know the content. What I need you to do now is study kids, and that comes to that T of Tend that Cris is so genius with. That's where the magic of workshop comes I in, is that heart of those human-to-human conversations and connections.
[00:20:20] Olivia: Both of you, I cannot thank you enough for speaking to engagement, uh, for our listeners and knowing you as a gift, uh, you fill my cup. I think as a teacher right now, connecting with others that inspire us and help us have that same excitement for our students is invaluable. Thank you so much for your time, and I'm grateful for both of you. Thank you.
[00:20:44] Sam: Thank you.
[00:20:45] Sam: Thank you, Olivia.
[00:20:46] Cris: Great to speak with you, Livi.