Full Transcript for Breaking Down Walls: How Every Teacher Can Support Student Literacy with Dr. Dickey

wait to get there to underserve other people's children. 00:02:06.060 --> 00:02:07.971 Like no one's driving to work thinking I can't wait to get there to underserve other people's children. 00:02:08.659 --> 00:02:23.629 So I find educators, whether they be central office leaders, the most senior school-based personnel, they have a desire to produce a schooling experience for children that is fully worthy of consumption. 00:02:23.629 --> 00:02:47.961 And that is half of the battle, like half of the battle is already won, because I don't meet educators who, typically, who do not hold best interests for the children and communities they serve, which makes them teachable right, which makes them able to be supported in ways that are both strategic and sustainable Challenges that I face. 00:02:47.961 --> 00:02:51.807 That, I see, is children. 00:02:51.807 --> 00:03:02.122 Far too many children in our nation are illiterate, but they don't have to be, and I think it. 00:03:02.122 --> 00:03:10.567 You know, 70 percent of our children in this nation have yet to reach the developmentally appropriate reading expectations. 00:03:10.567 --> 00:03:16.330 So for me that is not a child issue as much as it is an opportunity for adults to calibrate. 00:03:16.330 --> 00:03:18.711 Hopefully I answered that question. 00:03:20.013 --> 00:03:28.957 You answered it beautifully and I'm wondering like how do we steer the ship towards enriching our literacy experiences for students? 00:03:28.957 --> 00:03:30.625 How do we write that ship? 00:03:31.247 --> 00:03:48.925 Yeah, if John Dewey were alive, I would ask for his autograph, because he said more than 100 years ago that it is an imperative for us to bring the walls down between and among the content areas in order to promote literacy. 00:03:48.925 --> 00:03:52.175 And so who has a role to play in literacy development? 00:03:52.175 --> 00:04:02.468 A high school science teacher, a second, a sixth grade social studies teacher, and certainly a pre-k to two in early elementary? 00:04:02.468 --> 00:04:08.496 A teacher does, but in what ways do we behave as educators? 00:04:08.556 --> 00:04:33.430 because we know the vast majority of the children we're educating have have yet to reach the reading proficiency threshold, or, if they have, some of our highest performing kids are highly able to give their kids their flatlining and they could do better academically if we do what dewey said to us more than 100 years ago bring down the walls between and among the content areas, not to make everyone a reading teacher, but in hopes that everyone can help children become more literate in their content areas. 00:04:34.701 --> 00:04:38.951 I love that bring down the walls that you just referenced. 00:04:38.951 --> 00:04:47.785 That kind of leads into, I think, our next question, because it's really about great instruction, whatever content area you might be working in. 00:04:47.785 --> 00:04:51.913 So what do you think it really takes to deliver great instruction? 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:59.341 Well, a small number of practices, and that's what I help schools and districts with around the world. 00:04:59.341 --> 00:05:03.348 Dr Webb, can I talk about those four practices, or you want me to stay very high? 00:05:03.348 --> 00:05:06.432 Level Please please do Okay, all right. 00:05:06.432 --> 00:05:10.778 So I think we all behave out of what we believe. 00:05:10.798 --> 00:05:16.911 I mean, let's just take ourselves out of the education world for a moment In our natural everyday lives. 00:05:16.911 --> 00:05:19.324 What we believe in we act out of. 00:05:19.324 --> 00:05:32.166 And so if it's true in the natural world, I believe it's true in the educational ecosystem, and so we help school districts to conceptualize four major behaviors. 00:05:32.166 --> 00:05:39.365 Number one present children with a learning target and this may sound trite, but it doesn't happen enough in America. 00:05:39.365 --> 00:05:46.788 Present children with a learning target that has two parts, that is one part content, that is one part. 00:05:46.788 --> 00:05:49.297 High order thinking why? 00:05:49.297 --> 00:05:57.509 Because we live in a world of increasing impact by AI and children can ask chat GPT to think for them. 00:05:57.509 --> 00:06:04.728 Right, but a learning target is supposed to position children to think up the pyramid of cognitive demand. 00:06:04.728 --> 00:06:11.545 And far too far, all too often, I see learning targets on boards that require children to stay down at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy. 00:06:11.665 --> 00:06:21.805 Just remember not necessarily understand, not necessarily apply your understanding of concepts to a complex text or problem-solving situation. 00:06:21.805 --> 00:06:25.105 I don't always see analyze, which of course is pull apart. 00:06:25.105 --> 00:06:30.595 I don't always see evaluate, which is just the effectiveness of the author's use of a particular element. 00:06:30.595 --> 00:06:40.028 Whether it be in a text or in a math classroom, the author's the mathematical problem-solving situation that has to be pulled apart in order to be solved. 00:06:40.028 --> 00:06:42.923 And then, beyond it, evaluate is create. 00:06:42.923 --> 00:06:44.120 That's the highest level of thinking. 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:58.163 So we want, I help schools and districts to put in front of children opportunities to create, to evaluate, to analyze, to apply their knowledge and skills to problem-solving situations so they can do more than just understand and remember. 00:06:58.904 --> 00:07:05.473 And then, secondly, we help schools and districts, dr Webb and team, to never allow kids to skip over words. 00:07:05.473 --> 00:07:16.283 They don't know whether that be an economics class at the high school level or that be a second grade class where they're reading a text about the life cycle of a frog. 00:07:16.283 --> 00:07:23.406 Right, because that is literacy, because vocabulary

development, I think, is largely misunderstood in the US. 00:07:23.406 --> 00:07:29.303 That it is about you know kids using a word in a sentence and then magically they have an understanding of it. 00:07:29.303 --> 00:07:39.117 But I think it is whenever they see a word, someone in the room has to say hey, kids, I just want to make sure you understand it before I ask you to do something relative to that language. 00:07:39.658 --> 00:07:45.262 How we make that actionable in schools is we help folks to understand this, no matter the content, no matter the grade. 00:07:45.262 --> 00:07:47.211 Don't bring the text down to students. 00:07:47.211 --> 00:07:51.101 Bring students up to the text, build an access bridge to the text. 00:07:51.101 --> 00:08:01.550 And if you believe that there are things you would do, naturally right Like give kids a highlighter and ask them to tell you if they see words they don't know, Deal with those words and then read the text to determine its main idea. 00:08:01.550 --> 00:08:09.300 Deal with those words and then plot the points on a coordinate plane, deal with those words and then analyze the relationship between the elements on periodic table. 00:08:10.442 --> 00:08:14.999 Thirdly, we help schools and districts to understand the gradual release of responsibility in the 5Es. 00:08:14.999 --> 00:08:21.555 We call those instructional plan and delivery models, because in the back of my head when I'm planning a lesson, I'm thinking am I going to model for them? 00:08:21.555 --> 00:08:24.442 Am I going to see if my model impacted them? 00:08:24.442 --> 00:08:26.675 Am I going to put them in groups when they qualify? 00:08:26.675 --> 00:08:34.697 Am I going to follow up with opportunities for them to work independently once they've proven they're ready, or do I do the heavy lifting for them? 00:08:34.697 --> 00:08:40.687 And then, when they get to the assessment, they're unaccustomed to doing the heavy lifting and then they don't perform well. 00:08:40.687 --> 00:08:42.014 And then people blame the zip code. 00:08:42.014 --> 00:08:45.707 But it wasn't the zip code, it was the quality of the instruction inside of the zip code. 00:08:45.707 --> 00:08:51.621 And then finally, fourth and finally, we help schools and districts to teach kids how to write, because children write like they text. 00:08:56.774 --> 00:08:57.034 True, too true. 00:08:57.135 --> 00:09:04.809 Yeah, sorry I went around the mulberry bush with my response, but therefore practices that once we put them in place, kids do better academically without fail. 00:09:05.816 --> 00:09:14.868 We talked about how we need kids to access increasingly complex text, and we need to do that across content areas, and we need to do that with asking areas, and we need to do that with asking good questions. 00:09:14.868 --> 00:09:20.636 And you referenced bloom's taxonomy and I wonder what does that look like specifically? 00:09:20.636 --> 00:09:23.565 Is it we're going to read

that entire complex text? 00:09:23.565 --> 00:09:28.596 We're going to pull out some vocabulary words we don't know, and I'm going to ask you all of those questions at the end of the text? 00:09:28.596 --> 00:09:33.787 So my question is what does it look like to ask good questions? 00:09:33.787 --> 00:09:35.817 When and how do we ask good questions? 00:09:36.340 --> 00:09:43.043 Yeah, sure, I was recently teaching a group because our professional development is not, you know, death by PowerPoint. 00:09:43.043 --> 00:09:47.157 So you will see a PowerPoint, but we don't stay there, okay. 00:09:47.157 --> 00:09:54.488 I think it's also important for folks to see demonstration lessons consistent, julie, with what we espouse. 00:09:54.488 --> 00:10:16.285 So I found myself teaching a demonstration lesson to a group of high school kids in Arizona on, like sublimation, the water cycle, evaporation, things of that nature, and we were going to during the explain phase of the lesson, because I gave them an engagement opportunity, which is I asked them a question and then I backed up and let them discuss it so I could see what they were thinking about the concept. 00:10:16.285 --> 00:10:28.840 Then I asked, then I showed them a visual of the water cycle so that they could engage in like three questions inside of their heads with the and with the partner, like is anything being refuted, confirmed, or what are you wondering about the water cycle? 00:10:28.840 --> 00:10:42.102 So then I got to the explain phase of the lesson and instead of me lecturing to them about the scientific concepts, we read a piece of text on the scientific concept so they could explain it to themselves, to each other and ultimately to me. 00:10:42.102 --> 00:10:52.206 So I pull up this piece of text from the National Geographic and it was filled with multi-syllabic words that I know they didn't know Because the vast majority of the class they were English language learners. 00:10:52.206 --> 00:10:58.683 Know because the vast majority of the class they were english language learners, 70 of them. 00:10:58.683 --> 00:11:01.693 So I said to them hey guys, go to paragraph number one, okay, and highlight any word. 00:11:01.693 --> 00:11:05.481 You either have difficulty pronouncing or highlight any word. 00:11:05.481 --> 00:11:22.019 You have difficulty with its meaning and I need you to tell me the truth, because if you tell me the truth, I'm going to help you access this text in a way that does not require you to depend upon lecture from me for new knowledge. 00:11:22.038 --> 00:11:22.399 So what do they do? 00:11:22.399 --> 00:11:23.481 They highlighted all the words. 00:11:23.481 --> 00:11:25.125 They highlighted the word um, evaporation. 00:11:25.125 --> 00:11:29.518 So I said to them I said, guys, do you know what? 00:11:29.518 --> 00:11:31.000 Do you see a prefix in that word? 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:34.048 They were looking stunned and afraid to ask. 00:11:34.048 --> 00:11:36.158 So

I said the letter E. 00:11:36.158 --> 00:11:41.568 It means out, like exit, e-x, e or E-X, for what it means out. 00:11:41.568 --> 00:11:44.240 I said do you see a word inside of evaporation? 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:45.302 They said yeah, vapor. 00:11:45.302 --> 00:11:47.216 I said can you touch vapor? 00:11:47.216 --> 00:11:54.527 Kind of right, but it's fleeting, right, it's gas, okay, now T, now t-i-o-m. 00:11:54.527 --> 00:11:55.548 You see it? 00:11:55.548 --> 00:11:56.429 And they say yeah. 00:11:56.429 --> 00:11:57.296 I said what does it mean? 00:11:57.296 --> 00:11:59.441 They say I know, we don't know, we've never been told. 00:11:59.441 --> 00:12:00.764 It means process. 00:12:00.764 --> 00:12:03.136 So then what's evaporation? 00:12:03.136 --> 00:12:06.668 It's the process of water going to what vapor. 00:12:06.668 --> 00:12:11.438 It's coming out of the water phase, that's the liquid phase, and it's going into the gas phase. 00:12:11.438 --> 00:12:22.856 It came out that letter E and then we went through the text and we did very similar things with that paragraph then reread the paragraph. 00:12:22.876 --> 00:12:23.438 That's how you help children. 00:12:23.438 --> 00:12:25.426 You didn't just tell them what the word meant, you had them unlock the knowledge Right. 00:12:25.446 --> 00:12:34.856 I put in front of them the most commonly occurring word parts, because I know the condition that our nation's children are in and they found the word part on the chart. 00:12:34.856 --> 00:12:41.557 I put the work on them and that is my responsibility as a science teacher, as a math teacher. 00:12:41.557 --> 00:12:44.745 Right Isolate the variable S-O-L along A-T-E. 00:12:44.745 --> 00:12:46.395 Become isolate, get it by itself. 00:12:46.395 --> 00:12:48.118 Thank you, julie. 00:12:48.118 --> 00:12:49.921 Dr Webb, did you have a follow-up? 00:12:50.601 --> 00:12:55.809 Yes, absolutely, and it's on the theme of not just giving the students the answer. 00:12:55.809 --> 00:13:11.889 Earlier, when you were talking about the four behaviors that you focus on, you brought up AI, and while we're not completely focused on AI in this episode, no podcast would be complete without talking about AI at least a little bit, right? 00:13:11.889 --> 00:13:17.740 Yeah, be complete without talking about AI at least a little bit, right? 00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:22.696 Yeah, I think everybody is overly familiar with the cautions that we must approach AI with, especially when it comes to the classroom. 00:13:22.696 --> 00:13:28.436 Like you said, students can just ask a question and get the answer from AI in a way that has never been possible before. 00:13:28.436 --> 00:13:36.143 My question to you is the opposite Do you see opportunities for more higher order? 00:13:36.143 --> 00:13:45.831 Thinking back to Bloom's taxonomy, that could be possible for teachers, if teachers themselves know really good instructional practices. 00:13:45.831 --> 00:13:50.523 With a new tool

like generative AI, do I believe that it has a role to play? 00:13:50.523 --> 00:13:55.816 Yes, and maybe what role do you think that could be AI? 00:13:55.816 --> 00:13:55.996 What? 00:13:56.057 --> 00:13:57.201 role could AI play? 00:13:57.623 --> 00:13:57.783 Yes. 00:13:58.816 --> 00:14:06.942 Well, we have to be careful with AI, because if you ask AI a question, you don't know if that is telling you the truth, right, right. 00:14:06.942 --> 00:14:22.748 And so I have a colleague who likes to use AI to generate like copy, and when I read the copy, it's often filled with erroneous information. 00:14:22.748 --> 00:14:27.875 So I mean, you can get an answer, but can we trust the validity of the answer? 00:14:27.875 --> 00:14:37.909 So that is one of my abiding concerns about the AI, this generation we're about to step into. 00:14:37.909 --> 00:14:45.649 But, you know, I think it's important to put the technology away for a moment and teach children. 00:14:45.649 --> 00:14:48.174 Technology is supposed to be an accelerant of learning. 00:14:48.174 --> 00:14:53.254 It's not supposed to replace the teacher. 00:14:53.254 --> 00:14:54.186 It's not supposed to replace the teacher. 00:14:54.186 --> 00:14:58.941 It can't replace the teacher Because, not to say that, teachers are the only folks who hold knowledge. 00:14:58.941 --> 00:15:12.190 But we do our best as educators to make sure what we give to children is free of bias, that it is quality in nature, and I don't know if a machine can do that for us, right? 00:15:12.692 --> 00:15:13.414 It's a great answer. 00:15:15.870 --> 00:15:30.923 I want to build on that with you, Dr Dickey, because a statement you said earlier resonated with me is that we act out of what we believe, and so you shared your beliefs there with how AI should be the enhancement right as all other technology should be. 00:15:30.923 --> 00:15:50.442 Our roles that we work towards is helping to shift people's instructional practices, but I believe that shifting those practices really means shifting their beliefs, and so how do you support districts, teachers, administrators in shifting their beliefs around effective instruction? 00:15:51.190 --> 00:15:52.392 Oh, that's such a good question. 00:15:52.392 --> 00:15:55.778 Well, it is an iterative process. 00:15:55.778 --> 00:16:00.284 Okay, because I think there's two kinds of like change in leadership. 00:16:00.284 --> 00:16:12.221 One and these are not my ideas, I borrowed them from Heifetz and Linsky 2008, when they wrote the book Leadership on the Line there is technical change in leadership and there's adaptive change in leadership. 00:16:12.221 --> 00:16:14.597 Technical change is pretty easy to do. 00:16:14.597 --> 00:16:20.254 If the electricity power bill is too high, you turn the lights off when you leave and the power bill goes down. 00:16:20.254 --> 00:16:23.096 That's technical, easy to do, right. 00:16:23.655 --> 00:16:55.537 But adaptive change and leadership is a kind

of change in leadership that requires people to suspend disbelief, to encourage the suspension of belief, when people have seen so many initiatives come and go right, and so, hey, everybody, I went to a conference and now we want everyone to do this and stop doing that, and without any guarantee that what you're being asked to do is going to make a difference, and so that's called a doom loop. 00:16:55.537 --> 00:16:57.160 We've tried this. 00:16:57.160 --> 00:16:58.610 We don't have any proof that it worked. 00:16:58.610 --> 00:17:02.562 I'm sorry it didn't work, and so now we're going to do something brand new. 00:17:02.562 --> 00:17:23.318 So I think folks are traumatized by all of the different types of initiatives that are put in front of them, and so how we help folks is we say to them okay, those four practices I talked to Dr Webb about, we're going to do one at a time and they are not a program because public education is already over-programmatized. 00:17:23.538 --> 00:17:29.404 We've got a program for the program, for the program, and the people who are selling these programs are getting rich and children can't read. 00:17:29.945 --> 00:17:32.612 So it's not a program, it's a practice. 00:17:32.612 --> 00:17:39.203 It is something we do for the first month of the school year because we believe that children have a capacity for complexity. 00:17:39.203 --> 00:17:54.099 That's from Thomas Jefferson, so that we will do this thing for children, we will unfold our arms, we will wipe disbelief off of our faces and we're going to try this all together because we're members of the same team. 00:17:54.099 --> 00:18:01.932 And once everyone feels good about that practice, then we'll start learning about the second practice and then we'll make sure that everyone feels good about it. 00:18:01.932 --> 00:18:05.632 Nobody's being dinged if they're not perfect in the implementation of that practice. 00:18:05.632 --> 00:18:28.231 And then, once people feel good about instructional practice one and two, then we go, then we start learning instructional practice number three, and then the cycle continues and then you look back and you're in January and things are better for kids and it's able to be sustained because it's not a packaged program you must buy, because what's going to make schools better is not a pile of stuff, it's a body of knowledge. 00:18:28.933 --> 00:18:44.690 I just like I can't wait to unpack these instructional strategies more with you, because I think that we've just gone through this ebb and flow and this shift of instruction, with all the enhancement of technology with COVID and having switched to remote and the hybrid, and now we're back in person. 00:18:44.690 --> 00:19:00.603 And how do we mold together all those things that we did before we went virtual and after virtual and making sure that we integrate all of the technology around us and also make sure that we're discussing and collaborating and having human interaction and

it all? 00:19:00.603 --> 00:19:02.210 I feel like it's so overwhelming. 00:19:02.210 --> 00:19:03.653 What do you prioritize? 00:19:03.653 --> 00:19:05.619 And I think we're at this place right now, where it's. 00:19:05.619 --> 00:19:07.835 We just have to get back to good instruction. 00:19:07.835 --> 00:19:08.959 What is good instruction? 00:19:08.959 --> 00:19:16.134 What is good, effective instruction that I can deliver, whether I'm standing in front of you, whether we're virtual or hybrid. 00:19:16.134 --> 00:19:18.060 What is good, effective instruction? 00:19:18.060 --> 00:19:26.705 I just am very excited to dig into that with you, to see how it transfers across landscape and content and delivery method that we're using. 00:19:27.126 --> 00:19:28.411 Yeah, what makes good instruction good? 00:19:28.411 --> 00:19:34.575 Instruction has to be quantifiable and finite, otherwise people stay in a constant state of being overwhelmed. 00:19:34.575 --> 00:19:38.007 Right, because we're over-strategized. 00:19:38.007 --> 00:19:43.342 If we're over-programmatized and we're over-stratum, it's not a word, we're over-stratum-agized. 00:19:44.871 --> 00:19:46.935 It's a word now, Okay it's a word now. 00:19:47.076 --> 00:19:48.820 Maybe I should write a book about it. 00:19:48.820 --> 00:19:50.490 Stratum-agized okay. 00:19:50.510 --> 00:19:57.159 So, I think we have too many strategies to make things better for kids and people are drowning in those strategies. 00:19:57.159 --> 00:20:07.176 And and these are good intention people because it's easier ways to make a living than being an educator, and so it's already difficult. 00:20:07.176 --> 00:20:13.512 And so we, we compound that difficulty by sending people in 10 different directions. 00:20:13.512 --> 00:20:20.277 We help people go in one direction expeditiously and the test scores go up. 00:20:20.277 --> 00:20:27.102 But I am not about test scores Because, okay, fine, we live in the era of this accountability, fine, okay. 00:20:27.102 --> 00:20:31.516 But I think if you give children access to quality instruction, the assessment will take care of itself. 00:20:31.516 --> 00:20:40.021 I don't know how a brown cow eats green grass and makes white milk, but I do know, if you give children what they need, they will produce. 00:20:40.021 --> 00:20:43.498 Steph Dr Swab, you're laughing at me. 00:20:43.498 --> 00:20:45.477 Can you tell the people why you're laughing at me? 00:20:46.630 --> 00:20:58.883 Because you have a way of saying things that really resonate and are accessible, without it sounding like a bunch of jargon or pedagogy being thrown at you. 00:20:58.883 --> 00:21:12.112 So I'm really excited for our instructional council, leadership council and STEM council representatives to see you when you come in October for our shared learning and experience you in person. 00:21:12.112 --> 00:21:32.886 I am fortunate enough to have experienced your session when I met you in California, and so I'm looking forward to others to be able to see that with you, because to me, you come across as real and you understand the problem and you're giving people tangible, minimal strategies that work and they can latch on to. 00:21:33.570 --> 00:21:38.731 Yeah, and I mean I led and led in places, taught and led in places where children needed help. 00:21:38.731 --> 00:21:41.838 So all I know how to do is help. 00:21:44.865 --> 00:21:48.875 Steph, so you started to tease a little bit about what we have upcoming this fall. 00:21:48.875 --> 00:21:59.114 Mike, can you give us a little bit more about how we can continue to learn from Dr Dickey, because I know this was a great teaser about what we have coming up in the fall. 00:21:59.434 --> 00:21:59.836 Absolutely. 00:21:59.876 --> 00:22:21.700 Thanks, cassie, and if you are an avid listener to this podcast, you will likely know that we bring together our different councils and networks in what we call shared learning throughout the year and we'll have several dates this upcoming year and our first date will be on October upcoming year and our first date will be on October 1st, and our special guest for that session will be Dr Dickey. 00:22:22.201 --> 00:22:23.892 So we can't wait to hear more. 00:22:23.892 --> 00:22:46.259 I already have more questions, dr Dickey, that I really want to propose, but I'm going to save those all for October 1st and the theme that we have is really focusing on answering a couple of questions throughout the year, the first being how can we support shifts in the way teachers approach learning in their classrooms to impact growth for all students? 00:22:46.259 --> 00:23:01.829 And then, secondly, related to the first question, how do educators support their sorry, how do instructional leaders support teachers in their content area as a leader themselves, how can they be of best support to the people that they serve? 00:23:01.829 --> 00:23:11.099 So we'll be exploring those questions with a variety of some guest speakers and with each other in our Montgomery County IU councils throughout the year. 00:23:12.082 --> 00:23:12.342 Thanks. 00:23:12.362 --> 00:23:12.741 Mike Thanks. 00:23:12.761 --> 00:23:25.824 Mike and for those of you listening to learn more about this shared learning, this podcast will be there, as well as some information about Dr Dickey and our upcoming sessions at learnmciuorg slash shared learning. 00:23:25.824 --> 00:23:30.394 A big thank you, dr Dickey and everybody here today for sharing our insights. 00:23:30.394 --> 00:23:34.192 I know I've learned a lot and I'm really excited to dive in deeper. 00:23:34.192 --> 00:23:35.662 I know Mike has some burning questions. 00:23:35.662 --> 00:23:39.336 I have some burning questions that hopefully will get answered this fall. 00:23:39.336 --> 00:23:53.829 If you've enjoyed our conversation today, be sure to follow us on social media at MCIU Learns and visit us at learnmciuorg to explore more of our work at MCIU and specifically, our Office of Organizational and Professional Learning. 00:23:53.829 --> 00:24:00.123 We are focused on supporting educator growth through purposeful learning, authentic partnerships and innovative practices. 00:24:00.123 --> 00:24:11.423 We're so glad to be learning and growing with you, thank you.