BONUS: What Happens When You Break Teaching Traditions?

In this S5E15 Schoolutions Teaching Strategies BONUS, I unpack the question: What if the teaching traditions we follow aren't actually required? This week's bonus episode explores the revolutionary concept of "stepping aside" in education—not stepping away, but repositioning yourself so students can drive their own learning.

In this reflection on Sarah Zerwin's groundbreaking work, we examine phantom policies (those teaching traditions we follow even though we're not required to), explore why we often work harder than our students, and discover practical strategies for student-driven learning that actually work.

Key Topics Covered:
💫Phantom policies in teaching and why we follow them
💫The OTA (Original Thought Annotation) strategy for student engagement
💫The driving course metaphor for effective teaching and instructional strategies
💫Learning progressions and student self-evaluation
💫How to increase student participation and active learning
💫Practical teaching tips for inspiring students and boosting student motivation

This episode is perfect for teachers, education coaches, instructional leaders, school administrators, teacher mentors, new teachers, and anyone committed to education transformation and student success.

Featured Concepts:
✓ Student-driven learning frameworks
✓ Culturally responsive teaching approaches
✓ Inclusive teaching strategies
✓ Whole child education
✓ Professional development insights
✓ Instructional coaching techniques
✓ Teacher support and mentor teachers guidance

Whether you're dealing with low engagement, seeking innovative teaching methods, or looking to improve classroom behavior and classroom belonging, this episode offers actionable education strategies you can implement tomorrow.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Introduction: The Challenge of Stepping Aside
1:00 - What Are Phantom Policies in Teaching?
3:00 - Common Phantom Policies We All Follow
4:00 - The OT (Original Thought) Annotation Strategy
6:00 - Building Student Thinking: The Three-Step Process
7:00 - The Driving Course Metaphor for Teaching
9:00 - Student-Driven Learning vs. Teacher-Centered Learning
10:00 - The Elephant in the Room: Grades & Evaluation
12:00 - Learning Progressions & Student Self-Evaluation
13:00 - Book Recommendations & Final Reflections
14:00 - Your Challenge: Find One Place to Step Aside
15:00 - Closing Thoughts on Student Agency

🚀📚 Watch the full S5E15 interview here (https://youtu.be/bsiNQiIn5DQ)

Join our community of educators committed to cultivating student success, inspired teaching, and creating inclusive classrooms with a pro-kid mindset focused on the whole child.

📧 Connect: schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com 
🎵 Music: Benjamin Wahl

Don't forget to  👍LIKE &🔔SUBSCRIBE for more teaching tips, and 💬SHARE with fellow educators! 

#StepAside #Schoolutions #SchoolutionsTeachingStrategies #ForeverGettingBetter #TeachingStrategies #StudentEngagement #EducationPodcast #TeacherTips #InstructionalCoaching #StudentMotivation #ActiveLearning #EducationLeadership #TeacherSupport #ProfessionalDevelopment #InclusiveTeaching #StudentSuccess #InnovativeTeaching #ClassroomStrategies #EducationTransformation #WholeChild #CulturallyResponsiveTeaching #TeacherCoaching #LessonPlanning #InspiredTeaching #EmpoweredEducators #SchoolLeadership #StudentDrivenLearning #EducationReform 

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] What if the teaching traditions you follow aren't actually required? What if the structures you think keep your classroom running are actually preventing your students from thinking? This week I sat with Sarah Zerwin's challenge to step aside, not step away, and I have to be honest, some of this was hard, but in the best way possible. Because when we examine our phantom policies, when we stop doing all of the thinking work for students, when we reposition ourselves around the classroom instead of at the center of it, that's when the real learning becomes possible. 

So today I'm sharing the one question that's been haunting me since I spoke with Sarah. Where are we working harder than our students? Let's find out together.

This is Schoolutions Teaching Strategies, the [00:01:00] podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support they need to thrive. 

Hey everyone, it's Olivia. Welcome to your Friday bonus episode where I get to sit with what we learned this week and share the connections that are still buzzing in my brain. This week's conversation with Sarah Zerwin, it's Season 5, Episode 15. It's called Launching Students into High Level Work They Care About. If you have not listened to that conversation yet, pause this bonus, go back, listen, it's right below this episode, and then come back.

In this episode, we talk all about Sarah's book, Step Aside, and ever since we've recorded the episode, I have been thinking about control, trust, and what it really means to teach. I have to be [00:02:00] honest, some of what Sarah shared made me squirm a little, but in the best way possible. So if you are sitting at home in the middle of a snowstorm like I am, grab a cup of coffee. If you are somewhere where the weather is beautiful and warm, put on your walking shoes and go outside. Whatever helps you think and process - let's jump in to this bonus episode together. 

I want to start with a concept that Sarah taught me about that concept of phantom policies - those teaching traditions we follow even though we're not actually required to follow them. The example she gave was ninth graders reading Romeo and Juliet. It happens so often in so many places that it feels like a mandate, but again, it's not. And then I started to ask myself, how many phantom policies am I following? So this week I actually sat down and started to make a list of all of the phantom policies that we follow as teachers.

So here are some things [00:03:00] that were on my list. Five paragraph essays as the gold standard;  book reports with specific formats; everyone reads the same book at the same time; vocabulary quizzes every week, grading every single thing that students produce. And the more I wrote, the more I listed, the more I realized I couldn't always articulate why these things were happening in the schools I was teaching in, or the schools I was coaching in. Just that I'd always done them or that other teachers had always done them, or that the cooperating teacher I student taught under had done it before. 

Sarah said something that really stuck with me. She said, we get so focused on teaching books rather than teaching skills. And that's something that I've been thinking about. I think that phantom policies keep us focused on the wrong things. They really keep us focused on the what instead of the why. So [00:04:00] here's my question for you: What are your phantom policies? What are the phantom policies you see happening in your school building, in your school district? What do you feel like you're doing just because you've always done it? And what would happen if you questioned it? Not to throw it all out, but to examine it, to say, Is this serving my learning or is this serving my comfort?

Because here's the truth, and Sarah reminded me of this. When we follow phantom policies, we're often the ones doing most of the thinking work. We're maintaining systems that make teaching easier for us, but don't necessarily make the learning deeper for students. 

Okay, I need to talk about the peer genius of the OTA - Original Thought Annotation. I love how Sarah takes something as simple as a post-it note and turns it into a powerful thinking tool. [00:05:00] I noticed, and I think that's it. That's the structure. But here's what I keep coming back to. Remember Sarah's story about the student reading, the Batman comic? She asked him to point to something on the page.

Anything that he had a thought about, he pointed and then she said, why did you point there? He answered tentatively, and then she said, yes, that is your OTA. Write it down. And then he asked her, is it that easy? And Sarah said, yes, it's that easy. 

And what did I take away from that exchange? I think we make the thinking too complicated, too quickly sometimes. Sarah reminded me that we have to slow down. We can't ask for a polished analysis before we've even had time to notice. And starting small isn't just a pedagogical strategy, it's an act of trust. Because it says to students, your noticings matter, your tentative [00:06:00] thoughts are valuable, and you don't have to arrive with the perfect insight. You just have to show up and pay attention. 

And then, and this is the brilliance of the three step meeting making process - you help them build from there. Step one, start small noticing things. Step two, seek connections, talk and write to make sense. Step three, take action. Do something with your thinking.

It's a cycle, a loop, a machine, as Sarah called it, that is building student thinking. What I love most is that this framework works everywhere. It works in English class with literary analysis. It works in science class with observations. It works in social studies with primary sources. It works in math with problem solving. Because thinking is thinking. And we need to teach students how to think, not just what to think. 

So here's a challenge for you this week. [00:07:00] Try the OTA strategy with your students. Give them post-it notes. Ask them to notice something, anything, about what they're learning, and see what happens when you validate their noticings instead of immediately pushing for deeper analysis.

We have to trust the process. We have to start small if we want our students to trust the process and start small. Sarah's driving course metaphor actually inspired me to create a metaphor in the book I'm writing and it's going to stick with me for a long time. 

Sarah's metaphor reminds us that when we teach kids to drive, we don't just hand them the keys and send them off. We sit beside them. We set up a safe course, we teach the rules, we watch them practice, and gradually, strategically, we step back. But here's what Sarah made clear, and this is crucial. Stepping back doesn't mean disappearing. It means being present in different ways. 

[00:08:00] She outlined all of these positions on the driving course. Sometimes you're right beside them in the car, giving direct instruction. Sometimes you're in the car behind them following and observing. Sometimes you're on the outside watching to gather assessment data. Sometimes you're in the corner doing loop to loops, having fun with them. And sometimes you're preventing collisions before they happen. 

The only place you shouldn't be is standing in the middle, orchestrating everything, making sure that everything orbits around you. And that may hit hard because I think a lot of us, myself included, we're trained to be in the center to be that sun in the classroom, that everything's revolving around that sage on the stage. That's the model. Many of us that have been in the profession for a long time, were trained around. But when you know better, you do better. And student-driven learning requires us to get [00:09:00] out of the center, not to leave, not to abandon, but to reposition ourselves so that students can be in the driver's seat.

And here's what I'm realizing, and I hope you are too. This is harder than it sounds because it requires us to know our content even better. It requires us to know our students even better. It requires us to plan more intentionally, not less. Student-driven learning isn't less work for teachers. It's different work.

It's the work of designing experiences where students can drive rather than the work of driving for them. And I think this is where the misconception comes in because as Sarah said, people hear student-driven and they think it means chaos. It means no structure that it means you're just hoping for the best.

But again, it's the opposite. It requires more structure, more intentionality, more clarity about what you're doing and how students will get there. [00:10:00] And think about it, when you teach someone to drive, you don't just say good luck and walk away. You've thought through the route. You know where the challenging parts are. You've planned for practice in parking lots. Before you head to the highway. You have a clear progression in mind. That's what we need to do for our students. Design the course, then let them drive it. 

I also appreciated that Sarah talked about the elephant that is always in the room: grades. Because I know some of you that are listening are probably thinking, this all sounds great, but I have to give grades. I have to evaluate, and I cannot let kids just do whatever they want. Sarah gets that though. she does. In fact, she wrote a whole book about it: Point-Less. 

If you have not read it, I cannot recommend it highly enough to you, but what I appreciate in what she shared that's evolved for her between Point-Less and Step Aside, is the addition of learning progressions. And this, I think is the missing piece [00:11:00] for so many of us. Learning progression shows students what foundational understanding looks like. What proficiency looks like and what extension looks like. They make the roadmap visible. They give students the language to talk about their own growth. 

And here's where Sarah walks the walk. She lets her students evaluate themselves on these progressions. She wants them to set their own learning goals. She wants them to progress monitor. She wants them to choose their own semester grades and write the stories of their learning journeys. Because Sarah knows the work of evaluation is learning. When we do all the evaluation work for students, we rob them of that learning. We rob them of that agency. And of course, Sarah hasn't abandoned standards. She's actually more intentional about them now, but she's found ways to embed standards awareness throughout the daily classroom life rather than making them the [00:12:00] sole focus of learning goals.

The learning goals come from her students. She asked them, what do you wanna learn? And then she collected their responses and used AI to help synthesize them, which is such a great model of smart legal AI use, and then gave those goals back to students and said, this came from you. Can you imagine being a student in that classroom? Can you imagine the ownership you'd feel?

For me, this is what it means to put students in the driver's seat. Not to abandon curriculum, not to ignore standards, but to position students as the primary agents of their own learning. So here's where I'm landing. Sarah's work challenges us to examine where we're working harder than our students. Where we're doing too much of the thinking work, where phantom policies are guiding our decisions instead of our students' learning needs.

Before I go, I want to remind you about Sarah's books, Step [00:13:00] Aside: Strategies for Student-Driven Learning with Secondary Readers and Writers. And yes, it says Secondary Readers and Writers, but don't let that fool you if you teach any content area where students need to read, write, or think. So basically, any content area, this book has strategies you can use. And Point-Less: An English Teacher's Guide to More Meaningful Grading. 

So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening, for reflecting, for being willing to question your practice. That takes courage. Next week I'll be uplifting the work of my friend and colleague, MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW. We talk all about how we need to reteach our kids to be curious, to slow down and to notice. Until then, start small. Seek connections. And take action and maybe just maybe find one place where you can step aside. See you Monday. [00:14:00] 

Schoolutions 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. 

My invitation is this: Find one place where you can step aside. Maybe it's giving students post-it notes and asking them to notice things instead of telling them what to notice. Maybe it's letting students generate discussion questions instead of providing them. Maybe it's creating learning progressions and letting students self-evaluate instead of being the sole judge of their work. Whatever it is, find one place. Try it and notice what happens. Then make sure to send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com, and tell me what happened. How did stepping aside impact your students? 

Because here's what I believe our students are [00:15:00] capable of so much more than we often give them credit for. They can think, they can evaluate, they can set their goals. They can drive their own learning, but only if we step aside and let them. Not step away, step aside. And that is a big difference. Because we're still there. We're still designing the course, we're still teaching the skills. We're still providing support and feedback. We're just not doing the thinking for them. We are creating the conditions where they can think for themselves.

And ultimately, isn't that what we want? Students who can think independently, who can solve problems, who can evaluate their own work, who can set goals, and pursue them, that's what stepping aside makes possible. 

Don't forget to tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies that you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday [00:16:00] where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guest that week. See you then.