Ep 113 — How We Change the Conditions Matters Part 2 with Dr. Dan Keller

A classroom can feel like a pressure cooker or it can feel like a place where learning grows. We sit down again with Dr. Dan Keller to translate research on effective learning environments into a simple metaphor you can actually remember when the day gets loud: tend the classroom like a garden.

Dr. Keller introduces SWAN, a practical framework built around four conditions students need to thrive: Sunlight (right-sized challenge, cognitive demand, agency), Water (positive reinforcement and relationship-driven support), Air (emotional safety, calm, and space to breathe), and Nutrients (strong instruction, knowledge, transfer, and meaningful use of learning). We talk about what happens when any one element goes out of balance, like scorching students with too much demand, drowning them in over-the-top praise, choking the day of oxygen with nonstop pressure, or burning roots with “hot soil” content overload.

The best part is how usable it becomes. Dr. Keller shares quick, repeatable questions that act like formative assessment for classroom culture: What are you finding challenging, and how are you meeting that challenge? What are you doing well, and what is supporting you? How peaceful do you feel, and what brings you peace? What are you learning, and how are you using it right now? If you’re a teacher, coach, or school leader looking for a minimalist approach to instructional leadership and teacher wellness, this gives you language and moves you can use immediately.

Subscribe for more practical ideas, share this with a colleague who needs a reset, and leave a review so more educators can find the show. What part of SWAN does your classroom need most right now?

This episode is sponsored by Plan Z Education Services. 

Transcript

Welcome Back and Why Gardening

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, where the focus is on a less is more approach to education. Join your hosts, Christine Arnold and Tammy Musiowski, authors of The Minimalist Teacher and your school leadership edit, a minimalist approach to rethinking your school ecosystem, each week as they explore practical ways to simplify your work, sharpen your focus, and amplify what matters most so you can teach and lead with greater clarity, purpose, and joy.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Welcome back to the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today we have part two of our conversation with Dr. Dan Keller. Last episode he was talking about the basis of his research into effective learning environments and thinking a lot about why a metaphor about gardening would be super helpful for teachers in their practice. So diving right back into the conversation, we're going to hear about the practicalities of this metaphor and the SWAN acronym.

SWAN Basics and What It Means

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Love this. I can't even remember where it was now, but they were talking about how they've done research into greenery in hospitals and how it actually impacts the healing journey that people have, having even just a picture of nature seems to have a has a have an impact. So it reminds me of that very much.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

I was going to say that's part of what we're doing is looking at that research that's relatively new, that where we know quantifiably what some of these physical factors uh can be and the positive effects they have on learning.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Yeah, it's amazing. So I am chomping at the bit. What can I do on the fly, as you say, to to help create this garden feeling? What is the soil that I need? What is the oxygen that I need that I can uh improve that learning environment?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

So we've got these four essential elements. So do you remember what the acronym is for them?

SPEAKER_02 2:18

SWAN.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Perfect. And do you remember what SWAN stands for?

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Okay, okay. Here we go. Here we go. I'm part biologist. It's okay. So we got sunlight, water, air, and nutrients.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

There you go. So uh it's manageable. And the first thing is I want you to manage to remember swan and bring it with you back into the classroom. Now the next thing we have to help you understand is the connection to that imagery. So sunlight, we're going to have an icon of a sun. And water, we're going to have an icon of a droplet. And air, we're going to actually have an empty circle indicating how important the space is within side of the air. So, and that interestingly enough connects with the plan Z logo. And then nutrients, we're going to show a

Sunlight Means Right-Sized Challenge

SPEAKER_00 3:10

helping hand holding a small pile of uh soil with a little sprout coming out of it. And the sunlight is going to represent the thing that we grow toward. So that shouldn't be too hard to remember. That means ideas like challenge, cognitive demand, agency, ownership. And those words keep popping up in the research. So this connects them together and we think of them as sunlight. All right. So if you go to a school that doesn't have much challenge and cognitive demand and agency and ownership, and right, that that place is pretty dark and dreary. There's not much challenge going on. On the flip side, if we push kids too hard with challenge and we put too much cognitive demand on them, and we put too much agency on them and too much ownership, ownership on them that they can't handle, we're scorching them. Our idea is to find the right balance. This needs to be balanced. And so the first thing is as a teacher, we need to, as an educator in whatever role we're playing, we need to go around and make sure that the learners, whoever they are, are appropriately challenged. Think flow state, menthahy, and all

Water Means Useful Positive Reinforcement

SPEAKER_00 4:35

of that research. Okay, the next one, we also know from the earliest of trainings in education, water is soothing. And this is basically positive reinforcement, social, emotional, relational, connect, support that helps us to be persistent. We need to be in an environment that is nourishing with positive reinforcement. Tammy, you're a wonderful person. I really enjoy working with you. It's been really fun to get together. Christine, I'm looking forward to working with you as well. And I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do together as educators. And it's really a pleasure to be on the podcast with both of you. And I'm currently nourishing with positive reinforcement and social, emotional, relational connection, right? I'm intentionally doing it. We as educators, many of us tend to by default, go into the profession because we do this. It's important to keep doing it until our students and our learners, our learners around us are also doing it and everyone is practicing it because we need to keep every each other afloat. We need to create an environment that is nourishing. Now we don't want to drown. There can be too much water, right? Which kills plants. We don't want to drown in positive reinforcement. Tammy, I think you're the best person ever. I just think you are marvelous and you inspire me for the rest of my life for the first second I ever met you. Exactly, right? Right. Drowning, drowning in positive reinforcement. That can happen in schools. Let's not do that. On the flip side, if we don't compliment another or enough, people are thirsty for it. So let's all find that balance. And we have to remember some people need more water than others, just like

Air Means Calm and Breathing Room

SPEAKER_00 6:30

plants, and some people need more sunlight than others. Just like plants. The next one is air. This represents emotional refreshment, safety, peace, calm, nature, emotion, spiritual. We need air to breathe. And this is one of the things that we've been maybe messing up with in schools under the pressure of trying to do high-stakes tests, is that we've been uh depriving the plants of oxygen and they need to breathe. And there needs to be space within the day to breathe. Now we can get this wrong too. If we have so much of free, fresh air that is flowing everywhere and and blowing up storms, everyone goes flying everywhere and the plants can't even grow. On the flip side, if we've got no fresh air for the plants to breathe, and that they're all choking on bad air pollution, then they don't do well too. So we need to, again, get the balance right. School isn't supposed to be about just free-to-be, you and me, kick back my shoes and do nothing all day long. It's also not supposed to be a pressure cooker. And so we need to keep that in mind and allow for some of these special moments of breath where we all think body breaks are the slightest example, and then think of some of the ideas that people have had about introducing mindfulness into schools and the effect. We know the effect of what happens when you walk into a classroom that's in the practice of doing something that's mindful or calm. And it can be the classic would be you know, turn off the lights a little bit and read a story to the students while they're coloring or digesting, eating a snack,

Nutrients Mean Strong Instructional Soil

SPEAKER_00 8:30

right? So this these traditions exist in education. These are not new general ideas, they're themes. So we need some air. And then the last one is we need nutrients in the soil. This is where we do need a foundation that is based on good instruction and strategies and reflection and transfer and knowledge and what a lot of school is supposed to be. It is supposed to be filled with a bunch of really cool stuff that you can soak up and learn from. That's what schools historically were these resources of knowledge that didn't exist elsewhere. They now serve a little bit more as places that promote accessing knowledge and wisdom and skills and character traits and learning how to incorporate that and assimilate it and how to then go out into the world and integrate with it. So we're we're still we're there's still lots to reach into the soil. Now, if we push too much of that, we get what's referred to in gardening as hot soil and it burns the roots. So don't make it too information rich. On the flip side, if we make it information poor, we've got like what I'm dealing with in Arizona with some of the soil that we have here, and I have to do a lot of amending. So I've been into some schools where there isn't much content going on, and they do need to up it, they need to amend their soil. But I've been to other schools where they've they've got too much content going at the students and it's burning the roots. So these serve as metaphors that are basically covering all of the stuff that we want to, as educators, be monitoring to maximize

Simple Questions To Use All Day

SPEAKER_00 10:20

the effective learning environment. And there is a collection of, if we want to know, well, what's the what's the actual effect size that is going to increase test scores by what amount? The answer to that is found in a bunch of smaller studies included in these major categories. No, we don't have a research study showing right now that this garden metaphor with swan of these four categories has X percentage increase in learning. We are at exploratory research phase. But as far as I could tell, no one else has done this kind of research yet of asking these questions and have it being driven by what can be something that teachers can take away from them. So the the last thing, Christina, I want to make sure I get to is exactly what can teachers then do with this information. For each one of these, there are two key questions that I'm proposing that teachers can then use. And they I'm imagining that there might be even a small little handy poster that we could create that teachers could put on their wall to help them remember this. Because again, we want to use what we know about learning in memory, right? So prompts like anchor charts are helpful. So we would have this logo of the sunlight, it would say sunlight, it would remind us of these ideas of challenging, challenge. Okay. And then the the questions would be for challenge, it would be thinking of asking a student the question, well, what are you finding challenging right now? How are you meeting that challenge? You can also ask yourself those questions. But basically, those are monitoring questions that you as an educator just memorize and use them all day long with everybody. If you're a principal, you're asking teachers, what are you finding challenging? How are you meeting that challenge? And with students, teachers are asking students, what are you finding challenging? How are you meeting that challenge? Those are pretty decent questions. Are they the best ones? Don't know. We'll find out over time. But they're they're they're a good starter. They're good enough that we can revise them over time. For water, which is positive reinforcement, we want to be asking, what are you doing well? What is supporting you? Right? That elicits positive feelings and and connection to positively what's going on. Think of it as like triggering some of the gratitude response and the research related to that. For air, which is about emotional refresh refreshment, we're gonna go right in with a word. I picked it for now, maybe there's a different word, but how peaceful do you feel? What brings you peace? Now, maybe peace isn't the right word. We may need to explore that a bit. And for nutrients, we just simply go straight for the jugular, if you will. What are you learning? How are you using it? And I've been using those questions ever since Cheryl Gunnell's Perry research back in the 80s and 90s. And they're they're two very powerful questions. And it's and we should be monitoring regularly, asking students those questions and see how they answer it. And it's what are you learning? We're hoping that they can answer that. Otherwise, how effective was our lesson if they don't even know what they're learning? And how are you using it? And notice the difference isn't how you will use it someday when you grow up and get to next year's grade or when you finish school and become an adult. It's how are you using it present tense? So that's up to us as educators to create opportunities for students to use what they're learning now. And that goes to John Dewey's research about relevance of education. So that's the proposed structure. It's a lot to keep in mind, but it's swan and it's gardening. So the degree to which you remember it is, I think, the degree to which it's effective. If all you remember is you're supposed to flit around the classroom and act like a gardener tending to your beautiful plants, I think that that actually has some effect. And if you then break it down into four subcomponents and think about those and try to actually ask targeted questions related to them regularly, that probably has a more powerful effect. But I think that's what we're going to try to explore in asking participants to give us feedback about how well is this framework working

Planning The Garden and Core Takeaway

SPEAKER_00 14:50

for you. So that's sort of the story behind it. There is one other component, and that is there is some stuff around planning the garden and setting up structures. That's not on-the-fly stuff, that's other stuff. This is still in development, but there are some straggles of research related to these areas of how the physical spaces, what the organizing structures are, what managing, what management systems are being implemented, what's the direction that the organization is movement, how moving, how we're clarifying expectations. So a lot of that is really structural stuff. It's the stuff that comes up more in conversations when we aren't with students. So that planning framework is still in rough stages. I haven't polished that one. And it's not as necessary for people to be able to remember it on the fly because they can actually, when they're not with students doing this kind of structural planning, they can flip something open and have something to look at. But ideally, we also come up with some acronym that may be helpful for people to think about what those categories are. It's just not there yet. If it comes to you, let me know.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

There's so many things to think about with creating an effective learning environment. And sometimes, you know, if especially if you're going to a new school, you're just kind of dropped into it. And so you don't have time to think through all of these really important pieces. So I mean, I certainly appreciate all the time you've spent reading through this and thinking through the acronyms and the metaphors, which, you know, for me, metaphors, yes, like really stick. So I'm really hoping that this really resonates with people. Dan, we're we actually went, we usually have a 30-minute show, but it was so interesting to hear all the things you were talking about. We are having a longer episode with you, but we will wrap up just from that conversation. You said so many things that you could kind of pull out as a pear-down pointer, because which is what we always ask our guests for at the end of a show. Just one thing that someone might take away from this conversation that is like easy to just drag in with them or just keep in mind, what would you suggest?

SPEAKER_00 17:04

I think it's really helpful to consider that if we want to maximize the growth of our students, we want to immerse them in a learning environment that is highly effective. And I propose my best thinking from looking at this is that the metaphor of a garden may elicit the right responses within the educator to intrinsically align themselves with what the research suggests about what we should be doing. And that if we keep just thinking about tending a garden, like tending our classroom or our school or whatever the learning environment is, the scale of it, if we just keep that idea that we are gardeners, I I think it will not only have the intended effect on the learners, but it actually also, plenty of research behind this, it also just thinking about that nature metaphor has a calming effect on the educator, which then has a positive effect on the environment, which creates then a feedback loop that I think is positive. So lean into garden. I think the I I think there's something in that metaphor that is easy to take away and implement.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Thank you so much, Dan. This has been such a great conversation, and I can't wait to just unroll the rest out for people. Yeah, yeah, it's been so great. Thank you so much, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Thank you for having

Sponsor, Resources, and Closing

SPEAKER_00 18:45

me.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

This episode is sponsored by Plan Z Education Services, supporting educators with forward-thinking professional learning that puts both student impact and teacher wellness at the center. Driven by a vision to teach less, impact more, they help educators find purpose, prioritize what matters, and simplify their practice. Learn more at planzeducation.com.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Thank you for listening to the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Join Christine and Tammy and guests again next time for more conversations about how to simplify and clarify the responsibilities and tasks in your role. If today's episode helps you rethink, reimagine, reduce, or realign something in your practice, share it in a comment or with a colleague. For resources and updates, visit plan zeducation.com and subscribe to receive weekly emails. Until next time, keep it simple and stay intentional.