Coaching, Teaching, & Classroom Management Strategies Sparked From My Conversation with Kass Minor (❤️Olivia Wahl)

In this bonus episode, I reflect on my S4E17 conversation with educator Kass Minor and explore the urgent need for transformative education in 2025. I discuss The Minor Collective's community-based approach to education and highlight key insights from Kass's blog about preparing students for real-world challenges alongside revisions to the NYS Portrait of a Graduate. Drawing from recent research and a New York Times guest essay, Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results by Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop, the co-authors of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.  

I examine why student autonomy and agency are crucial for engagement and success. I share practical strategies for educators and caregivers to create learning environments where students can:

➡️develop essential life skills, 

➡️navigate diverse perspectives, 

➡️and pursue their curiosities while meeting academic goals. 

This episode offers a hopeful yet pragmatic vision for education that extends beyond traditional academics to help students thrive in an increasingly complex world.

#KassMinor #CorneliusMinor #TheMinorCollective #RadicallyProKid #TeachingFiercely #TeacherAgency #SocialJusticeEducation  #EdChat #Education #StudentAgency, #AuthenticLearning

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Olivia: Hi there. I'm so happy you're here. Your time is precious. And because of that, I want to let you know right away what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this episode. My conversation with Kass Minor offered you strategies to engage in community-based teaching that honor students' whole selves while empowering teachers to trust their professional judgment.

[00:00:22] Olivia: In this bonus episode, I offer my insights about why it's time to define a higher ideal for education. Why we need real-world preparation beyond traditional academics, why student agency and autonomy drive engagement, and why learning happens best through authentic connections. Stay with me. Happy New Year.

[00:00:44] Olivia: I am so happy to have you as a listener today. This is Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive.

[00:01:07] Olivia: I am Olivia Wahl and first and foremost, I want to say Happy New Year. It is 2025 and I see endless hope and possibility while I still know there are incredible challenges we face in the world of education, in the world at large, and I'm going to keep this episode short and sweet. And I really want to focus on the incredible, empowering, authentic work that Kass Minor and her partner Cornelius Minor do with The Minor Collective.

[00:01:42] Olivia: I mentioned in our conversation, Kass's blog, and The Minor Collective blog, I should say, how I look forward to their entries for little bursts of inspiration, and so I pulled another blog entry that Kass had done, Learning Together, Learning for Life, and I've leaned on this often. I want to speak to that blog.

[00:02:03] Olivia: And then I also want to speak to a piece that just came out on January 2nd. And this piece focuses on what we really need to do better. The answers are here. We just need to listen to our kids. We need to offer time for autonomy and our kids will rise to the occasion. They never disappoint. If we allow the time and space for them to practice what it means to do life.

[00:02:33] Olivia: And that's what I'm going to speak to today. So I wanted to start by just sharing, if you happen to go to Kass and Corn's homepage, there's an About Us tab at the top, and they have both inspired me as educators separately and together for many, many, many years. But I just wanted to share what they say on this page, because it captures the essence of, you know, why so many in our field gravitate to them and look to them for leadership, for advice, and just for hope.

[00:03:12] Olivia: Um, so this about us page reads New York City and beyond about the Minor Collective. “The Minor Collective is a community-based movement, both on the ground and virtual, led by Kass and Cornelius Minor in partnership with the with kids, families, teachers, and school leaders. TMC believes the greatest catalyst for sustainable change within a school community is driven from its heart, the classroom community.

[00:03:41] Olivia: A skilled teacher who centers their praxis in student-driven instruction is the most important pathway for creating shifts that lead to sustainable, equitable change. A pathway that underscores a liberated education for all people. Kass and Cornelius work to connect the dots within the ecosystem of school to enable community access and participation.”

[00:04:08] Olivia: And they do. They live and breathe this mission, this vision. And I have benefited from it as an educator myself and reading their work and knowing them as friends. So I, I just, I need to shine a light on the people doing this work tirelessly. And so I want to then shift to a blog Kass wrote, Learning Together, Learning for Life.

[00:04:34] Olivia: And the reason this hit so hard when I read it, was because it was right in the thick of my work with high school students. And I was coaching in a high school where a lot of the kids seemed really apathetic. They were disengaged. And I never actually believe that kids don't care. I see it as instructors, as educators, we haven't figured out or given the time to allow for curiosity in our classrooms, because for, I guess, for a myriad of reasons, we feel like there's a time crunch. There's too much content we have to cover. And yet we're not actually working toward a common goal with our kids if they are not invested in the content and in the essence of discovery that we ultimately want them to be.

[00:05:24] Olivia: I truly believe that this work is about creating better humans and a world that we want to live in. And that's why I so closely align with Cornelius and Kass's work. Um, but Kass shares about an interview she did while she was working on a project to revamp New York State's Portrait of a Graduate. And what that Portrait of a Graduate is, it's a collection of characteristics that New York State wants reflected in all high school graduates by the time they finish school.

[00:05:55] Olivia: And so she interviewed a variety of people close to the school system, these are Kass's words, one whom was a recent high school graduate. And Kass asked her, “if you could have taken a class in high school that didn't exist when you were a student, what would it be and why? And then she listened…” And what the student said is what I see in schools that is needed.

[00:06:20] Olivia: And that's why I'm excited to share this with you. If you haven't already read Kass's fabulous blog, Kass says, “First, she talked about needing a how to do life class to learn more about financial literacy, health insurance, how to get a driver's license, etc.” Kass says that she “silently concurred as she is still learning how to navigate her 401k and health care bills.”

[00:06:44] Olivia: She goes on, “I continued to listen as she grew more passionate discussing what she really needed from school in this how to do life class, a way to navigate and interact with people from different backgrounds who have completely different lived experiences and different politics than what you've experienced, let alone been exposed to, she said, ‘we're so polarized.

[00:07:07] Olivia: We don't know how to speak to each other. I don't know how to teach that, but maybe high school would be a great place to learn.’ As I listened to this 20-something, I thought to myself, yes, and it can start much earlier than high school, and it's not too late for those of us who are done with school altogether.”

[00:07:27] Olivia: So I want to think about that. I have spoken to this countless times, but as educators, especially in middle and high school, how are we offering students different perspectives around topics that we're studying? And so they are able to better understand. People with different backgrounds who have completely different lived experiences and different politics than what they've experienced, they need to look at a variety of text sources, a variety of voices around different topics.

[00:08:00] Olivia: And I think that this student is asking for that. And as educators, how are we meeting this need? It's something I'm going into 2025 continuously pushing myself to think about and aspire to. She shares that this was on, this blog was written on the first day of school in her hometown, Brooklyn. And that her children go to public school, and that she and Cornelius “are in community with their friends families, their teachers, their school leaders, as well as some local politicians, authors of the books they read, the curriculum they learn from, the research that drives the ed policy, a variety of perspectives that pop up, and that they're not always in agreement with how things should go.”

[00:08:46] Olivia: That “when there is genuine effort to truly open conversations, that the teaching and learning that happens when people really listen to one another is endless and that these exchanges are typically outside of media, digital mediums or formal meetings. They take place in coffee shops, in the in-betweens of commutes, and the phone calls after kids go to bed.”

[00:09:14] Olivia: I want to reread that line because I think that's really important. “These exchanges are typically outside of media, digital mediums, or formal meetings. Rather, they take place in coffee shops, in-betweens of commutes, and the phone calls after kids are in bed. I remember a conversation I had once with another podcast host, and he was saying so much of this work happens in the in-betweens in the hallways.”

[00:09:46] Olivia: And I think of the countless conversations I have on my commutes, traveling back from the schools I'm serving, that those conversations, the in-betweens, are where the magic happens, the face-to-face connections, or the actual voice-to-voice connections. I worry so much about the vitriol that lives on the social media pages.

[00:10:10] Olivia: And although I see incredible power in conversations that can happen, I also wonder how we can go into this new year, having more of those face-to-face conversations of the in-betweens and coffee shops or on our commutes. A bit later in this blog, Kass reflects and says, “the recent high school grad I interviewed said she didn't know how we teach people with different worldviews to engage. While I can't say I have any foolproof methods, I can say that I have an idea of where to start. Beginning with a question, educators and students are rarely asked, what do you believe in?” And if you haven't yet listened to my conversation with Kass about her magnificent book, Teaching Fiercely, Spreading Joy and Justice in Our Schools, you have to pause right now and go back and listen to that conversation.

[00:11:02] Olivia: It's powerful it's Season 4, episode 17. I will put a link in the show notes. I'll also put links to all of these blogs that I'm speaking to and Kass and Corn's website on page 130 of Teaching Fiercely, Spreading Joy and Justice in Our Schools, Kass offers a shared vision planning page. Uh, she notes it's originally created by educator Elizabeth Stein for co-teachers and then she revised the Shared Vision Protocol.

[00:11:28] Olivia: And so it can contain these conversations or the dialogue that this question fosters because it's big, it's immense. She links the Shared Vision Planning page, I'm going to put a link in the show notes. What's helpful, it's, it's such a powerful exercise that can evolve throughout the year, serving as a point of reference for who you are.

[00:11:49] Olivia: And so with that shared vision planning page, I also think of the idea of, you know, as educators, it's important for us to revisit our why and to ask, you know, what gets us out of bed to go to our schools every day. And also what challenges do we feel like we're facing for ourselves personally, for the students we're serving, and then reach out to others.

[00:12:14] Olivia: This work is impossible to do alone. And if we are going to offer our students the autonomy and agency that we want them to have, we need to figure out how to open up space for them to be curious. So, I want to pivot from highlighting Kass and Corin's work and that notion that Kass asks us to consider, how are we learning together and learning for life, to a guest essay that was in the (NY)Times today, Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results.

[00:12:49] Olivia: And it's written by Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop. They are the co-authors of The Disengaged Teen: Helping kids learn better, feel better, and live better. And this guest essay, it has so many wonderful strategies that you can apply tonight, tomorrow, right away to start offering autonomy.

[00:13:11] Olivia: If you are a caregiver, if you're a teacher, if you're a leader in schools, they actually start that “young adults say they feel woefully unprepared for life in the workforce and employers say they're right.” They give some statistics and they go on to say “many recent graduates aren't able to set targets, take initiative, figure things out, and deal with setbacks because in school and at home, they were too rarely afforded any agency.”

[00:13:40] Olivia: Then they also say “giving agency doesn't mean letting them do whatever they want. It doesn't mean lowering expectations, turning education into entertainment, or allowing children to choose their own adventure. It means requiring them to identify and pursue some of their goals, helping them to build strategies to reach those goals, assessing their progress, and guiding them to course correct when they fall short.”

[00:14:06] Olivia: The work I am so fortunate to be doing right now, in middle and high schools, Is this exact work, middle and high school teachers are offering students targets based on their own curiosities and then helping students track their progress based on the targets, but also based on their own personal goals that teachers are conferring into.

[00:14:31] Olivia: And yet, as I share about the work that I've had the privilege of coaching and facilitating and supporting over these last five years. The authors of this essay go on to say “this approach works because it teaches kids strategies they'll need to succeed in work and life and keeps them invested too. But a survey of over 66, 000 young people that we conducted with the Brookings Institute and the education nonprofit Transcend show that very few middle and high school students regularly have opportunities to work this way. Only 33 percent of 10th graders report that they get to develop their own ideas in school.

[00:15:09] Olivia: In third grade, 74 percent of kids say they love school. By 10th grade, it's 26%. School feels like prison, many teenagers told us over the three years of research. The more time they spend in school, the less time they feel like the author of their own lives. So why even try?” The authors of the essay go on to share about Johnmarshall Reeve’s work and the benefits of students receiving that autonomy and agency.

[00:15:38] Olivia: And that “in 35 randomized control trials in 18 countries, he and other researchers found that when students are allowed some opportunity to take their own initiative, they're more engaged in class and better able to master new skills. They have better grades, fewer problems with peers, and they're happier, too. The effect sizes were often between 0.7 and 0.9, a significant degree of impact.”

[00:15:57] Olivia: We know 0.4 or higher is going to have a significant impact on student achievement and that the best part of this news is that the essay authors speak to “teachers did not need to change the curriculum they taught or alter their disciplinary approach.

[00:16:22] Olivia: They just applied a few new teaching practices in the course of their normal lesson. What they share is it's really evoking students curiosity. Instead of laying out every detail of an agenda at the beginning of a lesson, they can still speak to the topic that they're going to be teaching, for example, the solar system.”

[00:16:41] Olivia: But before they start, they may ask, “Is there anything about the solar system that you're particularly curious about or you have a question about?” And they go on to speak to how Johnmarshall Reeve’s work, who is a professor at Australian Catholic University, teaches “how teachers talk to their students can be as important as what they say.

[00:17:01] Olivia: And so if we use a reasoning tone, basically explaining the why, if they were to say, I'm assigning this article because I want you to understand how photosynthesis can be useful in trying to invent new climate change technology versus you have to read this article by Friday, students will feel more respected, more interested, and they'll learn more.

[00:17:21] Olivia: So, rather than simply being told, students can reflect on what they need to accomplish and develop a plan to make it happen, and then teachers monitor and coach them along the way.” This essay also points out the critical role in ensuring that caregivers allow their kids more agency. “If we continue to push this do this now language, and monitoring progress closely, kids will not learn as well.”

[00:17:47] Olivia: The authors highlight a quote from the developmental psychologist Aliza Pressman, and Aliza says, “Let kids do for themselves what they can already do, and guide and encourage them to do things they can almost do. And then teach and model for them the things that they can't do. And the authors say this is how parents can help their children build agency.”

[00:18:08] Olivia: I'm going to read that quote one more time. “Let kids do for themselves what they can already do, and guide and encourage them to do things they can almost do. And then teach and model for them the things that they can't do.” They also highlight the work that Big Picture Learning is doing in the 142 public and charter schools across the country that they've established.

[00:18:30] Olivia: It's an education non profit. And they say that “students at those schools regularly reflect on the topic they want to explore, identify an organization where they can learn about it, and then spend up to two days a week in internships learning by doing, not just sitting and absorbing. Teachers debrief students weekly on the strategies they are using to meet their goals and provide guidance when they get stuck.” And the results are speaking for themselves. “They're seeing decreases in dropout rates, increases in student engagement, higher rates of college acceptance, and kids are inspired about their potential future selves.”

[00:19:08] Olivia: And so this truly begs the question, in our public schools across the world, how can we capitalize on the idea of agency? And help our students connect with organizations where they can learn about topics they want to explore connected to the curriculum that may align with their grade level or the classes that you're teaching.

[00:19:32] Olivia: How can they understand and experience that learning by doing, not just sitting and absorbing information? How can we help students reflect on strategies they're using to meet their goals? And provide guidance when they're stuck. It reminds me so much of the co-op models that some universities in the States offer, where you, as a college student, are asked, and you're connected with organizations that are in your field for two full semesters and so that you have that on the job training and experience to know what it feels like.

[00:20:12] Olivia: Imagine if we were giving students that opportunity in high school, and then the authors go on to say even with little adjustments like teachers and parents soliciting students' curiosity rather than just telling them what to do, it can make a big difference. So, I want to end this bonus episode with a quote from Jenny and Rebecca. “Maybe it's time to define a higher ideal for education, less about ranking and sorting students on narrow measures of achievement, and more about helping young people figure out how to unlock their potential and how to operate in the world. Amid the drumbeat of evolving artificial intelligence, wars, rising authoritarianism, political polarization, and digital disconnection. They need to learn a lot more than how to follow instructions.”

[00:20:57] Olivia:  I enter this new year with hope and also a realization of the work that we have to do. And so I am going to choose to circle up with people like Kass Minor, like Cornelius Minor and The Minor Collective that continue their community-based movement and pursuing what is best for our children.

[00:21:24] Olivia: They are radically pro-kid and I want to be radically pro-kid with them. Take care. I can't wait to see you next week. Happy New Year. Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcasts. Or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Now, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email, at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Let me know how you are helping young people figure out how to unlock their potential and how to operate in the world.

[00:22:06] Olivia: Tune in every Monday for the best research, back coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday, where I'll share how I apply what I learned from the guests in schools that week. See you then.