Math influencer and visionary Dr. Peter Liljedahl offers insights on how his Building Thinking Classrooms framework transforms mathematics teaching. Peter reflects on years of research and leaves listeners with a great starting point to ensure they successfully implement the “what” and “how” when facilitating a thinking classroom. Thank you to Peter and Corwin Press, who are so generous in offering a 25% discount & free shipping PROMO CODE (CORWIN25) for Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning.
Episode Mentions:
Connect & Learn with Peter
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast #buildingthinkingclassrooms #btc #peterliljedahl #mathematics #math #problemsolving #thinkingclassrooms #nctm #principlestoactions #teachersfollowteachers #edchat
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
Math influencer and visionary Dr. Peter Liljedahl offers insights on how his Building Thinking Classrooms framework transforms mathematics teaching. Peter reflects on years of research and leaves listeners with a great starting point to ensure they successfully implement the “what” and “how” when facilitating a thinking classroom. Thank you to Peter and Corwin Press, who are so generous in offering a 25% discount & free shipping PROMO CODE (CORWIN25) for Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning.
Episode Mentions:
Connect & Learn with Peter
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast #buildingthinkingclassrooms #btc #peterliljedahl #mathematics #math #problemsolving #thinkingclassrooms #nctm #principlestoactions #teachersfollowteachers #edchat
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
[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 excited to welcome my guest today, a major influencer in the world of mathematics, Dr. Peter Liljedahl. Let me tell you a little bit about Peter.
[00:00:24] Olivia: Dr. Peter Liljedahl is a professor of mathematics education in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Peter is a former high school mathematics teacher who has kept his research interests and activities close to the classroom. He consults regularly with teachers, schools, school districts, and ministries of education on issues of teaching and learning, problem-solving, assessment, numeracy, and building thinking classrooms. Our conversation today will focus on Peter's best-selling book, which I have right here, Building Thinking Classrooms and Mathematics Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning. Peter and Corwin (Press) Publishing are so very generous to offer a promo code for the book that I will make sure to talk into this episode’s show notes. Thank you for taking the time to have this very important conversation, Peter. Welcome as a guest on Schoolutions.
[00:01:24] Peter: Wow. Thanks for having me. Great introduction. I don't think I've ever been called an influencer before.
[00:01:32] Olivia: You are!
[00:01:33] Peter: I'm not sure if I should be putting that into my introduction.
[00:01:34] Olivia: I think you better. I think you better. Um, it is. It's such an honor, and I have different perspectives in seeing this work in practice in classrooms and also reading the book with an interviewer's perspective of questions I'm interested to ask you. So I'm interested to have those different lenses today. Before we jump into conversation, I always ask my guests who an inspiring educator is from their life. Would you share with listeners?
[00:02:07] Peter: Oh, who an inspiring educator in my life? Um, well, I can answer that from a number of different perspectives I guess. I can answer it from um, a research perspective. I can answer it from a teacher perspective, or I can answer it from a student perspective. Um, from a, from a, from a student perspective, for me, I think it was my grade five teacher. Um, I immigrated to Canada when, uh, at the beginning of grade three from Sweden. And so here I was a student and what we call back then an ESL student thrust into a classroom and in the Vancouver region of Western Canada.
[00:02:50] Peter: I think I was 1 of 3 ESL students in the school at that time. Um, and, you know, that first year, I was paraded down the hall to the ESL closet a lot where I spent time doing worksheets on punctuation and spelling and things like that. And that extended into grade 4 as well. Um, and, you know, in grade 5, I was really trying to stay in the classroom.
[00:03:19] Peter: It was not a fun space to sit there and do those worksheets. And, um, and I was trying to, to, I was trying to not be othered, I guess is the term I would say. I was just trying to be one of the kids in the classroom, trying to connect with other students. Um, and I had formed a, uh, uh, or become part of a group of friends, I guess. And, and, um, I remember my grade five teacher pulled me out of the class, pulled me out in the hallway. It was just before Christmas. He pulled me out in the hallway. And this, this was a man who could often be stern and, and you know, and he pulled me out of the classroom, and I was a little nervous what this was about.
[00:03:59] Peter: He pulled me out in the hallway and all he said to me was, you can be better than this. That's it. That's all he said. And it was the first time a teacher had ever said that to me, that sort of recognition that they're like, I never had anyone say something like that to me. And for the first time, I realized that, huh, that this, maybe I can, this is something I can be better at, this, this, this notion of school. And, um, and then I started to become better. And it was, it was a monumental moment for me, actually. Um, there is a there's a follow through to that story, actually. Um, if you've read my book and you've read the introduction, you've read the story of Jane.
[00:04:50] Peter: And, um, and it was around the time when I was in that classroom, spending time in Jane's classroom, the school got a new principal. That school that Jane was in got a new principal. And I was, um, I was leaving the classroom one day after school, and, uh and I was introduced to the new principal as she was touring the building.
[00:05:19] Peter: And, um, she was very gracious and very kind and so on and so forth. And she says, oh, let me introduce you to my husband. And she stepped aside and her husband was behind her. And he stepped forward and right away he just said, no introductions necessary. And it was my grade 5 teacher.
[00:05:36] Olivia: Come on! That's insane!
[00:05:40] Peter: And I told him right away, right away, and I think everybody who's listening to this podcast should do this. If you encounter a teacher who made a difference in your life, you need to tell them. And I think, right away, I shook his hand and I said, you made a difference in my life.
[00:05:51] Olivia: Oh, that just got me. Wow. That's incredible. That's incredible. Wow. Um, so that's, that's a good one, Peter. That's a good story. Wow. What a way to start us off. Here's the thing. That teacher believed in you almost before you believed in yourself. You needed that like push. That's what your work does. That's what your work does.
[00:06:15] Olivia: You believe every student can think, and that's why, right? We have to propel and it's a big issue. And so I'm going to lift the issue and why I'm thrilled and honored to have you as a guest, right from the very pages of your book, because why should I read it or say it any differently? Page 11, this, this got me, um, “In a typical one-hour lesson as you were researching, 75 to 85 percent of the students exhibited non-thinking behaviors for 100 percent of the time.” Holy cannoli.
[00:06:56] Olivia: “The rest of the students exhibited non-thinking behaviors for all but 8 to 12 minutes of the time.” So we're going to talk about, you know, thinking behaviors and what that means. Yet, you are yourself a solution because you are doggedly researching this work. Um, but also this book is an incredible resource, the practices and the ideas.
[00:07:17] Olivia: And yet I want to offer a caveat. Here's a solution yet it's not easy. This isn't an easy switch. So, on page, let's just see, 279 of your book, Chapter 15, “If we want students to think, then we need to give them something that will engage and propel them to think. But, this is far from enough. If nothing else in our practice changes, then thinking tasks will just frustrate the students and aggravate the teacher.”
[00:07:47] Olivia: We know from Jane's story. “We have to also create a culture where thinking is not only valued, but also necessitated. We have to build a thinking classroom.” Boom. So let's do it. Let's jump in.
[00:08:01] Peter: Wow. Okay. I think you're the first one who's ever quoted chapter and verse of my book like that. I almost felt like I needed to pull my book out and be reading along with you.
[00:08:10] Olivia: Well, it's just, it's so big. And look, this book has been well-loved, Peter. Oh, I see now.
[00:08:14] Peter: Oh I see that. That weighs more than it did when it came out of the factory.
[00:08:18] Olivia: Well, you have to really dive in. So what I asked is because I have, again, the privilege of being part of a school district and supporting a district that is trying to merge enVision as a math program with Building Thinking Classrooms and the idea of a workshop approach to teaching mathematics, like, ah, it's a lot all at once, right? I thought, well, look, this district, they've all done a book study. They're just at the beginning implementation. Where would we start this journey? And after reading the whole book, I really lingered with chapter 15.
[00:08:59] Olivia: So I want to zoom our conversation in - really narrow it down, because I feel like that will be really a great start for folks. And then at the end of our conversation, I want to circle back and share some questions and thoughts from an administrator and colleague that has been implementing Building Thinking Classrooms as an approach for years.
[00:09:21] Olivia: And so we will circle back to that, but let's start with the end in mind; toolkit one, chapter 15. Um, can you speak to the Building Thinking Classroom framework and the toolkits?
[00:09:33] Peter: Okay. So Building Thinking Classroom - so yes, there's a reaction that that that quote you cited from page 11, where I recognize that 75 to 85 percent of students spent no time thinking in the lesson and recognizing, of course, that this is a huge problem.
[00:09:51] Peter: Thinking is a necessary precursor to learning. If students are not thinking, they're not learning. Um, so how do we change that? How do we change this reality? Um, now this was coupled by a couple of other things that were going on at the time. First of all, I have to admit fully, there was a time in this research where I thought that all I needed were good tasks.
[00:10:16] Peter: That, that was all that was necessary, right? So here's all these students who are not thinking, ah, all we need are good tasks. And in fact, that's a trap I fell into with Jane thinking that, oh yeah, we just need cats and rats, it'll solve everything. And it doesn't. It just frustrates the students, aggravates the teacher.
[00:10:32] Peter: Right? It's um, but ironically, there are initiatives all over this world that are entirely focused on just that; on, on believing that we can change education just through the tasks that students engage in. Um, and that's not true in mathematics only. That is true in all other subjects. Everywhere I go, I see initiatives around crafting the “what,” the “what” we teach, the “what” we have students doing.
[00:11:03] Peter: It's, it's, it's important. It's a necessary, but far from sufficient. We also have to work on the how. It's not just, it's not good enough to have great curriculum. It's also how we teach.
[00:11:15] Olivia: Absolutely.
[00:11:16] Peter: And so that propelled me into that, the rest of the research, which was okay, how do we, how do we transform teaching? Now, this then becomes important in relation to another observation, I made, I also observed that everywhere I went classrooms look more like than they look different. And what happens in classrooms looks more like than it looks different. And the fact that how classrooms look and what happens in classrooms has not much changed in the last 170 years. And realizing that these institutionally normative structures are probably complicit in creating environments that, that, that fostered non-thinking behavior.
[00:11:58] Peter: So, then it became the question became, how do I fundamentally change these environments? Um, I need to give students something to think about. That’s the “what.” But I also have to change the environment in which they do that thinking and build an environment that is encouraging, conducive, and necessitates thinking. A couple of caveats to that. We, we worked within some non-negotiables, right? We have to stay inside the classroom. We weren't going to go out on the soccer pitch and do this, right? We have to stay inside the school bell schedule. These are non-negotiables.
[00:12:34] Peter: But once inside that classroom, inside that bell schedule, what can we do differently? And some of the practices that emerged were majorly transformative in this way, and others were more subtle. But the two really transformative ones that emerged were, um, we first of all have to get the students thinking collaboratively.
[00:12:58] Peter: And when we're going to get them thinking collaboratively, uh, it turned out that using strategic groupings, which is the dominant grouping strategy we see in elementary school, or self-selected groupings, which is a dominant grouping strategy we see in high school, was not effective.
[00:13:15] Olivia: That’s huge. We'll, we'll speak to that too. Yeah.
[00:13:18] Peter: Yeah, we had to, we had to get random. Um, and the second one was that it wasn't good enough to leave the students sitting in their desks. Sitting in their desks was such a huge trigger to continue to behave in that non-thinking fashion. We had to get them on their feet. We had to get them away from paper and working on vertical whiteboards or any non-permanent surface, anything that was erasable.
[00:13:44] Peter: And those were the key moves. And when, but these were only two coupled with thinking tasks that makes three of 3/14 practices. You talked about Chapter 15. Chapter 15 was, was based on two years of research on, okay, now I have these 14 thinking practices, how do I launch as a teacher?
[00:14:11] Peter: Knowing all of the things I should do doesn't allow me to actually start because I can't do all 14 at once. And if something as simple as random groups makes a difference, then where we start makes a difference. Well, that was two years of research of where should we start and, um. And what emerged was we need to start thinking tasks, random groups, vertical surfaces, and the research clearly showed we should do all 3 of those at once.
[00:14:39] Peter: In hindsight, there's very good reasons why that is the case, but that's sort of. The start and the end, both at the same time,
[00:14:49] Olivia: That's beautifully articulated, and I want to make sure listeners know that there is a gorgeous visual of the flow that - you just spoke to the beginning of it - on page 281 of your book that I I'm all about visuals as helpful tools. And I think that just knowing where I could start is really important. I also, I want to then circle back to the idea of tasks because the “what” is important and so I keep thinking of this notion of workshop and something I've learned over time from Sam Bennett, who wrote That Workshop Book, it's the best book out there if you want to know about workshop approach. A critical facet of it is, is that kids need to have time to work, to talk, to read, to write, and if we're sitting in that lecture mode of adults or grownups talking at kids, we're in trouble. And so that workshop notion of 1/3 an adult can own as a facilitator, but two-thirds of the time, the students are doing the work, and that goes across all content areas.
[00:16:03] Olivia: So, I think that the school district that I'm working really closely with, it's pretty brilliant to take Building Thinking Classrooms alongside a workshop approach because they truly go hand-in-hand and it's just been working out really well. It's interesting.
[00:16:20] Peter: Yeah, and you know, like, if you think about what you just said, juxtaposed with that normative classroom structure that has been around with for 170 years, that sort of normative classroom structures has been around, built around the lecture, uh, sit, listen, copy these notes, and I want you to have these notes just in case you want to do some thinking later outside of the classroom on your own.
[00:16:47] Peter: And the workshop approach like Building Thinking Classrooms, what it does is it says, look, that that time is precious. We want students to think we wanted to think collectively. And we need to bring that into the classroom. Now, the 1/3 is interesting because, um, Building Thinking Classrooms is a book that's written about what are the 14 practices where they come from and why are they important? And then that chapter 15 that you talk about is okay, now we know what's important, how do we implement? As a teacher, how do I implement this? And what is the sequence I should be implementing it in? And that sequence is an empirically to do sequence that has shown to be most effective for teachers and students. But that's not how a Building Thinking Classrooms lesson looks.
[00:17:35] Peter: Right? That's just the order that we implement these practices as we're integrating them into our practice. How a lesson looks is, is different. Now I just finished off, uh, co-authoring a book called Math Tasks for the Thinking Classrooms K-5.
[00:17:52] Olivia: That's exciting!
[00:17:53] Peter: Uh, it should be out at around Easter. And that book is written from more or less the perspective, starting with a task, what, here's a task we're going to start with, now what is everything we're going to do with that task in a Thinking Classroom lesson? And it, it, it organizes these practices more in the order that a lesson would unfold rather than the order that we would implement as we're integrating it into our practice.
[00:18:18] Olivia: Got it. Okay.
[00:18:19] Peter: So it's a book written for teachers who already have started playing with these practices. Now, that 1/3, what's interesting about that is that we reserve, we have found that reserving 1/3 of the lesson, but the last third of the lesson, for the closing of the lesson, which is where we bring order to the chaos, is uh, is a really important number.
[00:18:44] Olivia: It is that it is interesting. And with, with the practice that I've been studying for the last couple of years, I've also found that it's always important to have the debrief for that closure at the end. And yet there's this notion that the 1/3, if we're talking workshop, had to be at the beginning all at the same time.
[00:19:04] Olivia: So I would say even take that 1/3 and sprinkle it throughout as a facilitator, see when you need to jump in or facilitate and then get out. Um, but yeah, that closure is huge. And something that really struck me when we're talking about the, “what” - the idea of a curriculum task mimicking versus a thinking task, can you speak to that?
[00:19:26] Peter: Okay. So first of all, tasks are inert. Right? They are that a task is, is, is, is a non-moving object. It's the student that brings it to life, right? So what constitutes a thinking task for one student is not a thinking task for another. So, for example, in kindergarten, asking students what the three numbers that come before 8-9-10 are is actually a really interesting thinking task.
[00:19:53] Peter: They have to work hard at figuring out what those three numbers are, right? For grade 9 students, that's not a thinking task. That's just almost factual, right? Um, so, the task itself is inert. It's what the student brings to it that makes it a thinking task or a non-thinking task. Now, what makes it a mimicking task has a lot to do with what the teacher does - not what the student does, but what the teacher does. So, um, if I, if I ask students, what's 1/2 + 3/8? That is an amazing thinking task at a grade 6 to 8 level until I show the students how to do it, then it becomes a mimicking task. So tasks are inert. They are thinking tasks or not thinking tasks, depending on what knowledge basis student brings to it.
[00:20:45] Peter: They're mimicking tasks or thinking tasks based on what the teacher does to it or does prior to it. So all all tasks are thinking tasks to begin with. We suck the thinking out of them by, by pre-teaching it and turning it into a mimicking task.
[00:21:00] Olivia: We do. And we also, you know, I'm going to do a slight pivot here. It's also our grouping. You've already, you spoke to it a bit, but that idea of strategic grouping and self-selected grouping, we often think we're helping by modeling too much or by modeling at all. But it's the same thing with how we structure. We think we're avoiding chaos by grouping students together in certain ways, yet, no, you just said it has to be random, random, random, random.
[00:21:34] Olivia: Peter, I have to share with you, um, a teacher, a couple of teachers, um, in the school district that I'm working with are using an app called Classroom Screen. Have you heard of that before? No, I haven't heard about that. Oh, it's so good. And so it randomizes the grouping right on the screen for the teachers and the kids so they can see it because I know that's important, too. So can you speak a little bit more to the idea of grouping and why it needs to be random and visible?
[00:22:00] Peter: Okay. All right. So, a couple of things. So first of all, um, when we were doing the research on strategic grouping, this is where the teacher has a goal, and then they use that goal to carefully create the groups, right? So maybe my goal is to differentiate, so I'm going to make ability groups, or maybe my goal is to increase productivity, so I'll make mixed ability groups. Maybe my goal is just to have peace and quiet, so I'm going to keep certain students apart from each other. Um, whatever the goal is, I carefully structure the groups to satisfy that goal.
[00:22:35] Peter: This is strategic grouping, right? Uh, and like I said, it's a dominant grouping strategy at elementary. By the time we get to high school, teachers are more likely to say, work with who you want, which is called self-selected grouping. Um, and when we do self-selected grouping, students group themselves for social reasons more so than academic reasons.
[00:22:55] Peter: Um, and there's stresses associated with both of these types of groupings. Um, what we found was we asked, we asked, we ran a survey in with hundreds of students who were in these types of groupings, strategic or self-selected. We asked one question. The question was, if you knew you were going to work in a group today to solve a problem, what is the likelihood that you would offer an idea? And 80 percent of students in self-selected groupings and strategic groupings. said that, um, they were unlikely or highly unlikely to offer an idea. 80 percent! 80
[00:23:33] Olivia: 80 percent…80 percent!
[00:23:34] Peter: Now, why is that? Because they already know what their role is. It doesn't matter whether you're strategically or, or allowing self-selected groupings, they know what their role is. Um, we interviewed hundreds of kids and after grade two, every single one of them could tell us why the teacher put them in the group they were in. They knew what their role was.
[00:23:52] Olivia: They’re so insightful. Yeah.
[00:23:53] Peter: Yeah, and for 80 percent of their students, their role is not to lead, it's not to think. So they just, they enter that group predisposed to being passive follower, not active thinker. So then we disrupt this with random, right? And then three weeks into doing random and it didn't random wasn't good enough. It had to be visibly random. The students had to know that it was random and it had to be frequent; about once every 60 minutes.
[00:24:23] Peter: So, three weeks into doing that, we ran the same survey. If you know you're going to work in groups today, what is the likelihood that you would offer an idea? Now remember, the baseline data was that 80 percent of students said that they were unlikely or highly unlikely to offer an idea. After three weeks of visibly random groups, 100 percent of students said that they were likely or highly likely to offer an idea.
[00:24:46] Peter: And that's despite 50 percent of them saying, it probably won't lead to a solution, but I'm offering an idea. So the fact that they don't know their role means that they're entering those groups predisposed to think, to offer an idea. Right? That is transformative. Now, why 60 minutes? Why did it have to be frequent?
[00:25:06] Peter: So, one of the things that we observed was, in the first 60 minutes or so of a random group, there were, the roles were dynamic. They were shifting constantly. We had leaders and followers and scribes and, and people gathering resources and spies, and these roles were changing constantly, and they were negotiated.
[00:25:23] Peter: But after about the first hour, the roles stabilized. And now we had the leaders, and we had the followers and then we, so then we re randomize again, and now the roles are up in the air, and everyone's a thinker, and everyone's a leader, and everyone's a follower and so on and so forth. Now, the visible turned out to be really important.
[00:25:43] Peter: Now I'm going to say something about the digital randomizer that you're talking about, and it's going to cause you to rethink some things just the way it caused me to rethink some things. Um, so we found that cards work the best. Having a deck of cards and letting the kids pull a card was really exciting to the kids. They took their card. The card told them where to go. This is important. No matter how you randomize, it should tell the kids where to go. So they pull a card, and off they go. Um, and there was problems with that. Sometimes the cards didn't come back, or sometimes they came back crumpled or sweaty. Um, sometimes the kids swapped cards, and we had to work on all those little things.
[00:26:24] Peter: And some teachers started using digital randomizers. Um, now the problem with that was that the kids didn't necessarily see that it was truly random. Because it wasn't visibly random. But then they, um we coupled that with a dice, bringing a big fuzzy dice, and when a student gets to roll the dice, and whatever comes up, the five comes up, they get to come up and hit the randomize button five times, and now the perception of randomize, right, randomizing was heightened.
[00:26:50] Peter: And I thought, okay, yeah, I still prefer cards. The kids seem to like cards, but yeah, the digital randomizers aren't bad. And then, over the course of the last year, I've spent a lot of time in classrooms where teachers are using randomizers, digital randomizers. Now, the funny thing about being a researcher, being anybody actually in a classroom, is that it's like peeling an onion, right?
[00:27:16] Peter: When you're in a classroom, you notice things to begin with, right? You know, this off-task behavior, you notice that kid, you notice this, you notice the teacher doing this, you're noticing that surface layer stuff. And you peel that back the more time you spend in the classroom that you can notice the second layer, you notice effective questioning.
[00:27:31] Peter: You notice how there's certain social dynamics. You peel back that layer. You start to notice more and more nuance, right? So we notice more when the more time we spend in classrooms. Um, and then we noticed things. Suddenly, we noticed things that had always been there, but we just hadn't noticed them.
[00:27:49] Peter: Right? Because we have limited bandwidth in ou noticing capacity. Um, and there has to be things that we've noticed previously that are now not the focus so that we have room for other things. So I started spending, I was spending a lot of time in classrooms this year, and I started to notice something around digital randomizers that I never noticed when we did cards and it's this.
[00:28:12] Peter: Okay. And it's, it's very subtle. So the teacher hits a randomized button and then you hear this, ugh, or you hear, ugh, or nooooo, or like hehehehe. And I never heard that with cards. And of course, that had always been there with the digital randomizers, but I never noticed it. And I also, and once I started noticing it, I also started noticing the effect that had on certain students in the classroom.
[00:28:42] Peter: And I've called this, this is a form of what I call micro-bullying. So, the teacher hits randomizer, and then somebody in the room goes, ugh. Okay. Everybody in the room heard that. It's a very small expression. It's not specific. It doesn't say anything about anybody, but everybody heard it, and everybody knows who said it, and they can see what group they're in, and they can see immediately who they said it about, and that person also knows who said it, and they also know who they said it about, and they also know that everybody knows what was done.
[00:29:21] Peter: And it cuts deep, and it's deeply traumatizing to these students. Um, and one of the problems with micro-bullying in this way is that more overt forms of bullying happen in more isolated settings. Right? It happens on the bus, it happens behind the school, it happens in the hallway. This one's happening in full public view.
[00:29:46] Peter: And it's happening in front of the teacher, and because it's happening in front of the teacher, the student feels especially helpless because the teacher, here is this form of bullying, micro-bullying that's happening in front of the teacher, and the teacher's not doing anything about it. Now, there's nuances to this.
[00:30:05] Peter: I, about 50 percent of the time that I'm in an elementary classroom, or specifically K-5, You don't hear it at all. About 50 percent of those classrooms, the kids are just like, yeah, whatever. But in 50%, I hear it. And 100 percent of high school classrooms, I hear it. Um, and then you, and okay, so what do we do about it?
[00:30:25] Peter: Now, I've, I've been with teachers who have worked hard at trying to prevent this. It's almost impossible to stop. And the reason it is, is because students have an excuse for everything. What? That's how I breathe. I stubbed my toe. I was thinking of something funny. Right? Like, and even if you're able to suppress all of the, the sort of verbal expressions, there's still the glances and the hand signals and the eye gazes and so on and so forth. And I've come to the conclusion in the last six months that I no longer support digital randomizers.
[00:31:01] Olivia: Yeah, this is a really good cautionary tale because, you know, here's the thing, Peter, the classroom that I am living in most with using this model, the teacher is so humble and so transparent with her students of her own learning struggles, I'll call it, that she's really vulnerable is a learner with them, and it's a very, very safe classroom. So I would never hear it in that environment because there's so much trust between this teacher and her students and many of the teachers in this building structure their classrooms in the same way, but I think it's really important to put out that cautionary tale. That wasn't something I'd considered because it's not anything I would ever peel back layers of an onion and observe in the classrooms I'm working on it. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah.
[00:31:51] Peter: Yeah. And like I said, if, if it's working great, run it, but, be, be cautious. Be aware. Because it can be very traumatizing to some students.
[00:32:01] Olivia: Yeah, again. Thank you for sharing that. Um, so I want to pause a moment as well. I know when we're speaking of grouping, we're speaking of over-scaffolding, a very smart person once shared with me that it's much easier to give a scaffold, then remove a scaffold and I feel, yeah, it's so true. Right?
[00:32:23] Peter: So, first of all, let's talk about this idea of over scaffolding, right? Like one of the things that emerged in the Thinking Classroom research was this idea of flow and, using hints and extension and really minimizing what we say in the launch. And then, and then watching what happens. We can always say more later, we can't unsay the things that we said at the beginning. So, so this idea of what is the minimum thing I can say to get them started? And what is the minimum hint I need to give a group in order to keep them going if they're stuck?
[00:32:56] Peter: And I can always circle back. Right? I can always circle back and see how well that landed and see if more is needed. But we can never undo the damage of too much scaffolding. Right? Um, yeah. And the more when we do too much scaffolding, when we say too much, the students get into this mindset. And this is all what Building Thinking Classrooms is about, is how do I shape the perception of the students of what it is that they're meant to be doing. Right? And, um, if I, if I give them whiteboards to work on, what I'm saying to them is it's okay to make mistakes. If I give them flip-chart paper to work on, what I'm saying is it's not okay to make mistakes. Right? Students don't listen to what we say; they listen to what we do. So how do we shape the students’ behaviors through our actions? And when we over scaffold, the students slide into this psychological perspective of, um, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? Rather than thinking; they're trying to fit into your model of what's supposed to happen.
[00:33:55] Olivia: All right, so it would be interesting then for co-taught classrooms to understand, you know, what is their role with students with IEPs? And you know of that scaffolding, what would you suggest?
[00:34:08] Peter: Right. So when we're working, and so first of all, you just described every classroom in which I did the research, right? Like, um, Canada for a long time, for 25 years has run the community model of education, which is that if you live in the neighborhood, you go to the school. And if you're in the school, you're in the classroom. And there's very little segregation of students. Everything was integrated with these students who have IEPs, and I think you call them 504s.
[00:34:35] Peter: And I think one of the things that we have to understand, first of all, is that students are more alike than they are different. It doesn't matter what labels we put on them. Yes, there is diversity in our space, but if you take a, if you take two students without any documentation who are characterized as, as, as non-divergent, let's call it, um, there's more, there's more variance between them than there is between a student who is non-divergent and a student who is divergent, right?
[00:35:06] Peter: Like, there's more differences within the categories than there are differences between categories. It's all just a spectrum. Um, and, and whenever we put a label on a student. What we have to understand is like, we tend to think of students as invariant, right? But I'm going to put this student, this label on a student.
[00:35:27] Peter: This student has ADHD, right? And, and of course, they live with that 100 percent of the time, but we tend to pin that on them in a way that's indicates that this is, this is something that they, that is always a barrier to them. Right? But it's not! Right? Being an, living with ADHD, and I have a lot of experience with that is, um, is something that is really, really problematic when I have to sit in a really normative classroom in desks for long periods of time.
[00:35:56] Peter: Right? Um, but it doesn't affect me when I'm on the hockey, in the hockey rink, and it doesn't affect me when I'm going for a hike, and it doesn't affect me, right? Like it doesn't, it may affect me in the grocery store, but not so much in the movie theater, right? Like, we, we pin these labels on students as if they're invariant, that this is who they are, and they're always this person.
[00:36:19] Peter: But we also pin it on them as if the environment makes no difference. Because, I will tell you this, a student will perform differently with different teachers. And they will perform differently in different subjects, and they will perform differently in different classrooms. So, when we label a student, we're actually labeling the student, this setting, and the teacher.
[00:36:42] Olivia: And the expectation. I would say we're setting that tone and expectation because Peter, I want to illuminate, you know, I've also seen classrooms where they have a push in RtI teacher. It's called Response to Intervention, and that person will take a small group of children and while the rest of the class is working through on the vertical whiteboards, this group is set aside having their needs met and doing that in quotes, but then they go back and they are like, what just happened?
[00:37:14] Olivia: They're trying to see where they fit into the mix. And I mean, what do you suggest for push-in collaborative support? Should the kids be pulled out at that moment? What have you seen in your research?
[00:37:29] Peter: Okay, so maybe I'll just tell a story. So I was working in a high school years ago, and I was working with all the math teachers and all of the support teachers. Okay. Um, and we did a workshop and I flew home. Everybody - it was a good workshop. Uh, the department head emails me or calls me actually says, um great workshop, we all liked it, can't wait for the next one. The support teachers don't believe it'll work for their students. And I said, oh, so what do you think?
[00:38:02] Peter: He says, yeah, we, it probably will work. I said, so what do you think? What do we want to do? He says, well, you're back in two weeks. The SPED, the, the, the support teachers asked if, um, you could do a demo lesson. I said, fine, just give me a class. I'll do a demo lesson. So I show up. And, um, we have, I'm told which class I'm going to work with. I'm going to work with a group of grade 8s. Um, we sit down in a pre-planning meeting, and I said to the support teachers, I said, okay, tell me about the students that you support in this room. And they all crossed their arms and said, no. And I said, okay, fine. That's, I understand. I understand what they're doing.
[00:38:42] Peter: They want to see how this works in its most natural environment. Although that isn't a natural environment, we know things about students when we are teachers. Um, but anyway, fine. Okay, we go into the lesson. We do; I did tax collector. Tax collector, great task. It's in chapter 6 of the book. Um, we ran it for about 45 minutes and then we exited.
[00:39:01] Peter: Random groups, vertical surfaces, tax collector. It was, it was one of the first times the students had seen a Thinking Classroom setting. Um, we come out; we are in the post-lesson meeting now. I sit down and I say to the support teachers. I said, there are five students in that classroom who have. A special designation.
[00:39:20] Peter: I named the five students. I named the designations. I named what their IEPs specify. They were blown away that in 45 minutes I could identify these students. But of course I can because I get so much visual feedback about what's going on in this space. Um, here's the irony. Three of those students were leading their group- one so harshly that I had to step in and save the two non-divergent “A” students.
[00:39:57] Peter: A fourth one was not leading his group, but was fully engaged, fully present, participating, contributing in their group. The fifth one, okay…they were a wanderer. They were disruptive. He had to be managed. But that's what we do as teachers, right? Like, like, none of our teacherly craft is invalidated by Thinking Classrooms.
[00:40:21] Peter: We still need all of that knowledge, all of that skill to manage the diversity in our room. It's just, it's going to look different. Students need support. They need intervention. We just don't know which ones they are yet, right? That student who struggles in a normative classroom may thrive in a Thinking Classroom and vice versa. There may be a student who thrives in a normative classroom who's now going to be struggled, who's going to be struggling with the challenge of having to think collaboratively and so on and so forth. Students need support. Just like the over-scaffolding. Don't over-presume what students need in terms of support.
[00:40:58] Peter: Let's see what they need first, and then let's respond to that, right? It's for it's called response. We're going to react to what we see. We're not going to presume what these students are capable of. And then we intervene and we work together. And again, we work in the same capacity that we do. We step in; we intervene, we give the minimum, we step back, we see how it works. And if we have another body in the room that can help with that. Awesome.
[00:41:25] Olivia: Awesome. Um, so here's the thing, I wholeheartedly believe in your work, um, your research. I've seen this in action and I've seen the incredible transformation that's had, not just on students, but on teachers and their belief system shifting. So this is a gift that just keeps on giving in many ways. Here's the thing. I have heard folks say, oh, it's a fad. It's a fad. You have these vertical boards…and every time I think, no, it's not a fad. And I also get, I'm always concerned with that, the term fidelity, because I think it gets misused a lot, um, with, especially when it comes to the “what” of curricula, like teach with fidelity.
[00:42:10] Olivia: Well, what does that mean to people? It's, it's such the terms used so loosely these days. But I want to just take a moment because you've spoken to the vertical boards. Why is the workspace and the continuity of the workspace so indicative of the continuity of student behaviors? And why is it important that we speak to fidelity when it comes to Building Thinking Classrooms?
[00:42:37] Peter: Okay, so, um, so, all right, let's, let's talk about some of the things that are beneficial, immediately obvious when we get students vertical working in their random groups at a vertical whiteboard, um, one marker per group. All right, so, what are some of the benefits? Well, first of all, everybody in the group is oriented to the work the same way, right?
[00:43:00] Peter: If they're working, sitting down in a group, someone's always looking at that work sideways or upside down, which means that someone has a privileged position and the others do not and then that creates immediate ownership, they’ve become the leader. Everyone else is a follower and so on and so forth, right?
[00:43:16] Peter: When it's vertical, everyone's oriented to the same way. That creates access. When it's vertical, the students can see each other's work. They can see the work of other groups. That promotes knowledge mobility, right? The smartest person in the room is the room. There is so much knowledge in the room. We just got to get that knowledge moving around the room. The third thing is I'm a better teacher when the students are working on whiteboards, right? I don't have to wait for their quiz on Friday to see if the students understand what I'm doing; what they're learning. I can see it right now and I can respond right now.
[00:43:49] Peter: So I am much more effective as a teacher, when I can see what everybody is doing. I can see who's participating, but I can see what their level of thinking is, what their misunderstandings are, and I can see where the hangups are, where the challenge is, I can see where the strengths are, and it just allows me to be much more responsive as a teacher in the moment.
[00:44:10] Peter: Not in that sort of reactive two weeks later, oh, hey, come on, I going to need to pull you aside. It seems like you have some misunderstandings that you've been living with for two weeks and practicing and reinforcing doing it the wrong way. Right? Um, and these are all really obvious, and they're all great. But they turned out to be eclipsed by one interesting piece of data.
[00:44:28] Peter: And it took over two years for me to get at this data. Um, it turns out that it's not that standing is so good; it's that sitting is so bad. And not like sitting is the new smoking bad. It, it turns out that when students are sitting, they feel anonymous and the further they sit from the teacher, the more, sorry, the more anonymous they feel. And the more things that are between the student and the teacher, the more anonymous they feel. So the more desks and other students are between them, the more anonymous they feel. And when students feel anonymous, they disengage and that's both a conscious and a subconscious act, right?
[00:45:09] Peter: The teacher can't see me, so I can play on my phone. But also the teacher doesn't see me and I just kind of drift away. Right? Um, what standing up did was take away their anonymity. Not in a sort of I've outed you and you feel vulnerable and exposed because everybody is standing. Um, but I take away their anonymity, they no longer disengage.
[00:45:35] Peter: What, what standing up did was it, it kept them more engaged and we saw it. Like just coupling these three things together: thinking tasks, random groups and vertical surfaces, we went from 20 percent of students thinking for 20 percent of the time to 80 percent of students thinking for 80 percent of the time.
[00:45:50] Olivia: It's incredible. It's incredible.
[00:45:53] Peter: Massive difference.
[00:45:54] Olivia: It is a massive difference. Yeah.
[00:45:57] Peter: Now on to fidelity. So fidelity is sort of an interesting word in my space. Fidelity is a word I bump up against all the time when teachers are talking about pacing guides and programs and stuff like this. I never really used the word fidelity around Building Thinking Classrooms.
[00:46:18] Peter: Building Thinking Classrooms is a result of my research. It tells me, the data has told me, what are some of the most effective ways to get students to think. And if you want to participate in that, if you want to get students thinking, then here you go, here are some tools. It's a framework. Chapter 15 presents that image you talked about is a Building Thinking Classrooms framework.
[00:46:41] Peter: Frameworks are, are just that. They're frames. It's, you still have to hang all of who you are on this frame. Right? Every single teacher who implements Building Thinking Classrooms implements it slightly differently. Those innovations are what are the micro-moves in every chapter. Right? It'll look different for every teacher.
[00:47:02] Peter: There are things that are going to make it work better and things that are going to make it worse. But ultimately, it's up to the teacher. What's going to work, who they are, where they are in their journey, where their students are in the journey, and they're going to have to use their professional judgment to decide what's best for them and their students.
[00:47:18] Peter: Having said that, I can tell you some of the things that don't work. So, for example, if we do Building Thinking Classrooms on Thursdays, “Thinking Thursdays”, um, kids are going to have a good time. You're going to have a good time, but you're never going to reap the benefits of what building thinking classrooms can give you, right?
[00:47:34] Peter: You're never going to fully build a culture of thinking that then can be transported into covering content, right? If we do it the week before Christmas or the week before spring break, we're going to have a good time, but, but it's not going to transform the culture of your classroom, because kids are really good at compartmentalizing. But maybe that's where you need to start.
[00:47:56] Peter: And maybe that's what's best for you and your students in the beginning. You're going to have to make that judgment. Um, I think fidelity, the, the most common time I, I talk about fidelity has to do with when exactly as you're talking about when teachers are trying to integrate, Building Thinking Classrooms with some sort of a program.
[00:48:17] Peter: Um, and what I say there is, like, look, your program, your curriculum, that's the “what,” Building Thinking Classrooms is the “who,” right? I mean the “how.” Right? It's, so we got the “what”? And we got the “how”. There is no contradiction here, right? For everything we do in the classroom, we need a “what,” and we need a “how.”
[00:48:37] Peter: Your program is your “what,” Building Thinking Classrooms is the “how” these things can integrate. The only time that doesn't work well is when teachers work in a setting where fidelity of the program is demanded to the point where there is no room for teachers to think about the “how,” right? Where, where the “what” has become so all-encompassing that it is eclipsed the “how”, that we're not even thinking about “how” anymore, all “how” is, is, is, is a fidelity to, to the program.
[00:49:11] Peter: And one of the things that I always say to teachers, if they're working in that setting is, you need to create space for your professional autonomy. And one of the best ways to create that space is stop asking what it is administration wants you to do and start asking what it is they want you to achieve. In a, in a conversation of what it is you have to do, you have no professional autonomy, but in a conversation on what it is that they want you to achieve, you have lots of professional autonomy.
[00:49:42] Olivia: Lots. So wait, Peter, I want to wrap our conversation then and ask you this - with a colleague that has been using Building Thinking Classrooms as a framework for many years. You know, what can you offer with your research now of, you know, test scores, higher education feedback that you've received, um, with this framework being utilized for a while?
[00:50:07] Peter: So, I have tons of stories from teachers who have you know, they’ve implemented Building Thinking Classrooms, and now their standardized test scores are higher than they've ever been, or they're higher than any of their colleagues in the building who haven't implemented or stories where I implemented in December, and I can see on the standardized test scores on the units that I had covered before I implemented, the students performed below average or at average and on the units that after I implemented, the students are performing above. Um, the sum of all of this data indicates that for teachers who implement Building Thinking Classrooms, even just the first three practices…that first toolkit, they see an improvement; 80 percent of teachers -85 percent of teachers see an improvement. The more, the more practices they implement and the greater fidelity to Building Thinking Classrooms that they use, and that's their choice, not my demand. The more fidelity to Building Thinking Classrooms and the more practices they implement, the greater the improvement.
[00:51:11] Peter: Right? So about the teachers who are implementing, I would say the 1st 9 to 10 practices with strong fidelity, uh, are reporting over 10 percent improvement on standardized assessment and so on and so forth. But these are self-reported. Um, it's, it's never been my interest to improve test scores. It's always been my interest to improve thinking, increase thinking, and improve the experience of learners. Right? Um, test scores are just byproducts of that.
[00:51:45] Olivia: They are. And I want to pause for a moment because our fidelity should ultimately always be to the students, right? And so the test scores being a byproduct, there is the notion of pressure that comes on teacher's shoulders. And I cannot suggest enough that looking and just embarking upon the journey of becoming a Building Thinking Classrooms educator, just giving that privilege to students and that trust, I think, is a critical next step in the world of mathematics. It's not a fad. It is just a tremendous shift. And what I see is the future of education.
[00:52:26] Olivia: Peter. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time today to have this important conversation.
[00:52:32] Peter: Thanks for having me.
[00:52:33] Olivia: Yeah, Take care. Schoolutions is a podcast created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Special thanks to my guest, Dr. Peter Liljedahl. Also, a big thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. I would love for you to share the podcast far and wide. Leave a review, subscribe on YouTube, and follow us on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Facebook @schoolutionspodcast. If you'd like to become a Schoolutions sponsor or share episode ideas, leave me a SpeakPipe voice memo at my website, www.oliviawahl.com/podcast, or connect via email at @schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Please keep listening. Let's continue finding inspiration together.