#404 – The Impact of Authentic Learning

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• How do you define authentic learning?
• What authentic learning experiences do you recall as a student?
• What authentic learning experiences have you facilitated as a teacher?
• What professional learning experiences have been the most authentic for you?
• What is one action step that you can take away from this episode?

• Personal and Authentic: Designing Learning Experiences That Impact a Lifetime (written by Thomas C. Murray)
• Increasing Authenticity in the Classroom (Michael McDowell via Edutopia)
• Authentic Learning: Bringing Real-World Relevance to the Classroom (Mia Finch via Education Advanced)

#404 The Impact of Authentic Learning

AVID Open Access
44 min

Keywords

authentic learning, student engagement, hands-on experiments, community connection, real-world application, collaborative projects, authentic audience, professional development, deep learning, meaningful feedback, student ownership, educational standards, community resources, joy in learning, lifelong impact

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:00 How would somebody actually use it if the teacher’s not telling them to do it?

Winston Benjamin 0:05 What makes you excited to want to do something again?

Rena Clark 0:10 You can have fun and have deep learning and connection to standards and get excited, and to me, that is authentic learning.

Paul Beckermann 0:21 The topic of today’s episode is the impact of authentic learning.

Paul Beckermann 0:27 Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes that every learner can develop student agency. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:39 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the Podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark,

Paul Beckermann 0:51 I’m Paul Beckerman,

Winston Benjamin 0:52 and I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators,

Paul Beckermann 0:56 and we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:00 Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:05 Our quote for today is from Thomas C. Murray from his book Personal and Authentic. Tom writes, “What will you do on day one that will have your kids running back to your classroom on day two?”

Paul Beckermann 1:17 All right, what y’all think of that?

Winston Benjamin 1:21 I could start. I think this is a—for me, there’s been a lot of conversation in my building around the idea of engagement. A lot of teachers say the word engagement, but they like, they have very wild definitions of what engagement means. And I think this encompasses the idea of what student engagement is: having the ability to design something that is interesting to students, where they want to come and find out more about it.

It doesn’t have to be perfectly from their experiences, but something that is engaged, that is interesting enough that pulls them back to your classroom. And I think that can be planned. It’s not just the, “Hey, it’s the curriculum or the value of the lesson,” or “this topic that they’re doing.” It’s how are you presenting it that makes it interesting to students.

Paul Beckermann 2:11 What do you think, Rena?

Rena Clark 2:13 Well, it actually makes me think of what I tried on my first day. So I hated being, you know, the first day was like, “Oh, we’re gonna learn names and go over the rules, yada yada.” My kids hate the first day of school, and so forth. So I was like, “Nah, we can do that on day three, four. I don’t care anymore. They’re gonna walk in and be engaged.”

And what that meant for me was they just jumped in. So I always created this scenario, and they got to do a hands-on experiment. So on the first day, I had a whole bunch of leftover glow sticks from my Fourth of July celebrations, a way to introduce myself, build some relational capacity.

I was telling them about, you know, my husband and I were driving home one night late, and our car broke down, and we were way out. We had no cell phone service. There might be there now, and we were stuck, but it was kind of a dangerous road, and there were other cars, and the cars that come by, they’re moving fast, and no one really seems to stop. And I don’t have flares or a flashlight, but we had all these glow sticks. So we need to figure out how to use them to get someone’s attention. Should we wave them? Should we lay them in a pattern? Should we stick them in water to make them brighter? What was the best way to make sure that a car would respond to us?

And so then I just had glow sticks out for the kids, and I had some water and some cups, and I said, “Okay, now you’re in the same situation. Use glow sticks, cups, water, designing an experiment to figure out the most effective way to use glow sticks in an emergency.” And I just threw them together and said, “Okay, go.”

They’re like, “What? We’re just going?” “Yep, we’re going.” I got to see what kids like. Took leadership roles right away. Who are the kids that weren’t going to talk or maybe were going to need some more support? What kids like? What… how did… how did they deal with that situation? Who was in it? So it helped me kind of see what was going on. They were pretty excited to come back, because they were like, “That first day was a hands-on experience relating it to something outside the classroom.” And so they were excited to come back for more. Well, some of them were.

Paul Beckermann 4:20 You hooked him right away. That’s awesome. It reminds me of a friend of mine. He was teaching Lord of the Flies, you know that book. Oh yeah. And the kids went to lunch, and then while they were at lunch, he and I stacked all the desks up in the middle of the room, and they came back from lunch, and they walked in, and it’s like, “What’s going on?” And he just let them do something.

You know, everybody kind of took on a different role, and it’s a lot like your glow stick kind of a thing. It’s like, experience at first, and then debrief it, you know, then talk about it and use that as the context for your conversations. Pretty cool.

Paul Beckermann 5:01 Well, today, in our episode, we’re going to dig into the topic of authentic learning, and I think there’ll be some overlap in the conversations that we’ve had, and we’re going to explore how we’ve seen authentic and meaningful learning experiences impact learning in the classroom.

So we’ll share some things from our past experiences as students, ourselves, as teachers, and even as professional learning facilitators. So we’ll share multiple perspectives that we’ve experienced. To start off with, though, let’s talk about when we say learning experiences are authentic, what do we mean by that? What does authentic learning mean to you? What are your thoughts?

Rena Clark 5:41 [It] can mean so many different things. For me, I think it means connected to students’ lives. So it, to be authentic to the kids in the room, authentic to them, it needs to be connected to them, to the community you teach in. It has to be applicable.

But again, it doesn’t… it could also just mean that the students have ownership over it, so it’s authentic to them, because it’s something they care about, and they feel a sense of purpose around it and value it. And then, to me, it’s always, it can be applied outside of school and other situations. It’s not just this one thing. It’s applicable in multiple senses. And we can talk about that, like multiple subjects, areas. I always think of, like, it doesn’t have to be project-based learning, but it’s something I can take and apply to other projects, other situations. I’m going to be able to use this to solve problems in my life outside of school.

Winston Benjamin 6:45 I like that. Am I able to use that outside in my life outside of school? I completely agree with that. And I think that a lot of people get this idea that authentic has to be outside of the curriculum. Yes, the curriculum is something that they can use in their future. If you’re going to add, subtract, multiply, you’re going to use that. Reading, all that, all the conversations that the standards have established are legitimately things that students will and can use in their future.

I think the thing that makes it authentic is the presentation of that material in the information to students, right? If you’re intentional about, like, “Why do I care about the American Revolution? How does that impact me on a day-to-day basis?” I think sometimes people assume that the information is valuable just because it’s information. But again, unless the information is presented to me as in a way that matters, it doesn’t even… doesn’t make sense.

Like, I could be in an office, in a meeting, in my job today as an adult, and if that meeting is just sit and get, I’m not gonna care about that information to do anything more with it. So I think it’s just the way, even as an adult, what makes you excited to want to do something again? Like, think about that as your starting point for authentic. Like, what is it that would make you sit down and want to do this again, thinking about a mind of a young person, or what you were as a child? So I think the intentional planning makes something authentic.

Paul Beckermann 8:25 I love that idea, Winston, that if it’s authentic, it’s going to be motivating, right? There’s going to be some, some real, intrinsic reason why that student wants to do something. And I always think about authentic being students applying information and skills in a way that’s realistic, like both of you said, outside of the classroom walls. Or you could say, “How would somebody actually use it?” All right.

So with that context in mind, let’s go back in time to when we were K-12 students. What is one or two learning experiences that felt authentic to you and left an impression on you as a student in K-12?

Winston Benjamin 9:38 I don’t know if you really want me to answer this one, because

Paul Beckermann 9:39 I do, Winston. I want to know.

Winston Benjamin 9:43 I got in trouble one time for staring at pigeons outside of a window in high school. That’s how boring my high school was at times. Okay, so with that being said, I went to a vocational high school, so as many people know, like, you’re you’re learning a trade, and my trade was paralegal study. So I meant to be a lawyer. Who would have thunk? I like talking. Who would have, you know what I mean? Um, right.

But I had this teacher, Miss Unger, and I mentioned her many a times. She was a small Jewish woman who ran the class like she was our moms. Nobody said nothing. It was what it was. But in my high school time was when Columbine High School happened, the Columbine shooting. And it was a—there were several conversations about, “Should schools have metal detectors, and why and why not?”

And my school, I’ve always gone, growing up, I went to school with a metal detector in middle school up. So for me, it was like, “What’s this conversation?” So Miss Unger had us write conversations, look at the policies around it, who and what schools were actually impacted by metal detectors before the Columbine, why they—people were like, “Hey, now we need to think about who and how we protect students,” right? Just the conversation about it.

But she also found out that they were holding hearings in DC, and somehow she set up a school trip where we took our project and actually went to DC and listened to the Congressional hearing. And it was the coolest thing ever. It was like things that we talked about in class was like, “Oh yeah, we know that.” We were sitting in the background being like—she had to tell us this, not to jump up out of our seats.

But it was, it made the process of law real, right? It took us from the idea, the why, the who you’re speaking to, and then even seeing it on its final stage, like, “This is how it happened.” So that was the greatest class that I still think about it to this day. My homeboy and I, Gilbert, we have pictures from our trip, and we still talk about it to this day, like, many years later, we still hold those pictures and talk about it. Hey, that’s the test. If you’re still talking about it now, it made an impact. You know what I’m saying?

Like, still to this day, the—the Washington Monument was was being um, redone. So we have pictures of of it being um, of it scaffolding. Like, little things like that stick with me so much. And I still to this day remember most of the reasons why and how um, metal detectors impact students’ belief on the safety or even presentation of who should be policed in certain ways. So that still impacts my view of the world, and I still owe it to Miss Unger, because, yeah, you know, even though I’m not a lawyer, I still use my voice.

Paul Beckermann 12:39 Rena, what about you? And you… and you remember back there?

Rena Clark 12:41 Oh yeah, I can. I remember lots of things, but, and I feel like I’ve talked about this teacher before, too: my—and it was also middle school for me. I’m going to jump back to middle school, although I love my elementary friends, but middle school, Mrs. Parrish’s science class.

And I grew up in Eastern Washington state, which you have to understand, there’s—you think of Washington, like Seattle and ocean and water. No, no. Eastern Washington’s like dry wheat fields. There are not oceans near us. We’re talking five hours away. So, but we had a whole unit on, like, basically oceanography, ocean, and everything else.

But what was great about this, we were learning about water cycles, life cycles, ocean life. And you know, that was great, but we were doing this knowing we were going on an oceanography trip. So we actually learned a ton of things, and then we took a trip, and it was an overnight trip where we took a bus to Seattle, and we got to go to the waterfront.

And for—you have to understand, a lot of these kids, we had never been that far away. But we went on a boat, and we went out in Puget Sound, and I still remember, and we actually did science experiments on the boat. Like, we dropped the water, we pulled water samples up, and right there, looked at the different plankton, different… on the boat. We were able to do… we had a touch tank.

And then we had come up with questions. And we got to do during lunch, like, talk to a diver that was down in the water, actually live, diving, pulling the animals. And we got to see the animals we just learned about in the second, see the effects of the Sound. And you know, I was lucky enough and privileged that I had gotten to travel as a kid, but so many of my friends had never even been to in salt water, let alone get to do all these things. But it was very memorable, very memorable trip. It was awesome.

And then it was kind of fun, because eventually, when I became a teacher, later on, I took my students on that—that trip. But I just think it was so—and she was the same teacher that let us turn the classroom into a rainforest. We literally used paper and brought in, you know, steam steamers and humidifiers and turned our classroom into a rainforest. And I still know so much about the three-toed sloth. I could tell you everything, and I love sloths because of that. And I built my sloth and had it and did a whole report. And we took our families, we brought them to the school and walked them through our rainforest made of paper with the humidity. So same, same class, but I remember a lot of from that class because of those experiences that I got to have.

Paul Beckermann 15:23 Yeah, you were oceanographers and yeah, you were scientists. That’s awesome. I would have been one of those kids, too, because I didn’t see the ocean till I was like 25. Yeah, but I grew up [in] Minnesota. They’re a long ways away.

I don’t know, but I didn’t have a Miss Unger, but I had a Mr. Timmons, and he did bring history to life for my class and I. And you know, history wasn’t always at the top of my list, but man, when we studied the Constitutional Convention, we were representatives at the convention. In the classroom, we had role-play cards, so we knew who our constituents were, and we had to argue, and we had to pass bills, and we had to decide if we were going to join together into, you know, a new nation.

And then when the tea got dumped into the Boston Harbor, personal Whitehead got put on trial, and we had to defend him or prosecute him. Was he guilty of treason against the Crown? Was he not? So I was an attorney. I remember I was sick one day. I couldn’t go. I would have crawled to school to be at that event, but my mom wouldn’t let me go. So I was like calling the other kids in seventh grade and telling them, you know, how to argue the point and things like that. Those were real, authentic experiences. Even though they were like simulations, we got to be those people, just like Rena, you got to be a scientist, and Winston, you got to be a participant at a congressional hearing. I mean, those things live on in our memories, and if we can give that to kids, wow, that’s just so cool.

Rena Clark 17:25 I want to I want to point out, though, in all of those examples, none of them were done in isolation or alone. Everything was collaborative with others, in groups. Like nothing. And any of my other examples, I’m like, I wasn’t just sitting there doing a project by myself, writing a paper by myself. It was all in collaboration.

Paul Beckermann 17:43 Yep, that’s great observation. All right, let’s zoom ahead a little bit, time travel. Now we’re teachers. So what are some memories of authentic learning that you have tried or experienced with students, and you felt that they were really engaging, like they were successes?

Rena Clark 18:05 I’m going to share two, just because I just think they’re both so good. And one, and like, this is authentic in a little bit different way. We talk about authentic audience a lot.

So when I was teaching sixth grade, we had reading buddies, and we had kindergarten reading buddies, and I talk about this. And we were doing a writing project, but I had my sixth graders interview the kindergarteners, and then they wrote a story, because we were doing the hero’s journey. And they interviewed the kindergarteners to ask them about, like, what kind of superhero they like? What are they interested in? And they wrote a story for that child. They created a book for the student.

And I had kids that really, honestly, had not completed any writing all year. They got that book done because there was an authentic audience for them. And I’m telling you, those kids lit up. And my kids, when they wrote those stories, they were so proud of them. And the way that the the love they got back from those kids, because it mattered to them, was fantastic. And I just think they really enjoyed that experience, knowing that they’re writing for somebody, somebody else, that they had a relationship with and that they, you know, it was nice. So they really enjoyed that.

Yeah, that audience, that makes all the difference. Absolutely. Knowing that it’s not just for the class is part of the authentic and realistic part of the experience. It’s way more motivating than a grade. Oh, if someone says, “Why are you doing this?” “To get a grade?” Well, then that’s not really great.

And then the other thing, and again, I was in sixth grade. This was, this the year, lucky, and had some—if we, we did a whole unit on flight. We, we had some flexibility, and I had an amazing team that year. And we had, we did a whole unit on flight, and we also partnered with, we are lucky enough to have the Museum of Flight here over in Seattle. And if you don’t know much about Seattle, we—there’s, if you know the word Boeing and airplanes, and we have the Museum of Flight, so we worked with them.

But we created this whole unit on flight, and we taught the kids about, really, the four forces of flight. It connected with our science. But to start with, my students did total physical responses to the four forces, so lift, like, weight, gravity, thrust, drag. And they did interpretive dances to the theme from Top Gun. And they performed, they performed those.

And then they also applied what they learned. We went on a field trip to the Museum of Flight, where they got to, like, go around to actual airplanes, learn about them. Then they did flight simulation, where they got to be in flight simulators. And then when we were back in the classroom, they actually built airplanes, electric airplanes, and we had a competition about carrying weight that these airplanes flew.

And we had real people come in, and we had a community night. Then we had judges come in, and they had to do a presentation about their airplane and talk about the forces of flight, and they showed their airplanes flying, and they got feedback and everything else. So it was, you know, an ongoing project, real planes connected to the community, connected to our local community’s history, and what, you know, was going on with our local community, and it was really, really successful, and the kids really enjoyed it.

Paul Beckermann 21:28 They were astrophysicists, so oceanographers and now astrophysicists.

Winston Benjamin 21:34 They… science is the thing. So I’m glad that you’re giving examples in science, because a lot of my examples are from the humanities area.

But something else that—that other than the authentic audience, something else that I really appreciate you mentioning, and I think it just deserves to be like the authentic feedback, right? Like the feedback from somebody who does this job, and they’re telling me about the thing that I’m doing. Like, that feels better and more, like you said, Paul, like motivating than just, “Oh yeah, my teacher wrote it.” To know that someone in the field is hearing and validating your what you’re saying, I think also adds a layer to that motivation.

So I’m going to take that and just give you my example where, because it has an authentic audience and an authentic feedback aspect. So again, I work in the Renton School District. A couple of years ago, Renton was—it was in a big boom. It was a large—because, like Rena said, Boeing is around here, so there’s a lot of economic opportunities that were happening right before the 2000s. There was a lot of land that was being available for development, right?

And so this one teacher was like, “What does it mean? What do you got to do to get a land proposal accepted by the city?” And the kids was like, “Oh, that’s a great question. It’s over by my neighborhood. It’s over by my neighborhood.” So they did a whole entire project where they proposed what they would do with the open land. Some kids thought about doing a youth center. Some kids thought about housing, authority building houses, and what the teacher did was she went out and got an architect. She got a public facilities worker from the town of—from the city of Renton, to come in. I was there, of course, you know what I mean. Sometimes I just love being around kids. So the authentic of a person, just like seeing not in your classroom, is also a good audience.

But um, several other individuals who work in, like in construction, who work in all of the fields related to, um, this idea of what they were going to do with this plot of land. And the kids were so excited to present their work, to show what they were doing, to be—they were—they were so proud of their posters, their ideas, their dreams. Because again, not only was it just an authentic idea, but it was also their dreams of what their neighborhood could look like, what could I build? How can I make my place better? And that was, that was just a wonderful part of the work. Because, yes, they did their—they did the presentation. So that was, it was centered around public speaking and convincing, so it was also connected to persuasive writing. So like, the standards were all there within the project. It was just, it was just beautiful to see how she executed it.

Rena Clark 24:26 Firm standards, flexible means.

Winston Benjamin 24:28 Exactly, exactly.

Paul Beckermann 24:32 I’m just thinking now in the context of what both of you shared. You know, this authentic audience piece, the examples I was thinking of are authentic audiences too, and actually they push outside of the classroom walls or beyond the classroom walls.

Like when I taught speech, I would have the kids do job interviews. So we did a job interview unit, but they had to go and be interviewed by somebody in the community as if they were applying for a job. And, you know, I set up some some contact with them, so there was some context. But, oh my goodness, you saw kids dressed up in suits and fancy clothes, and that you never saw in anything but jeans and T-shirts ever before. And they would wear them to school because, you know, they had that interview right at the end of the day. It was, they were just so fired up for it.

And then I think about creative writing. We’d publish a classroom anthology, but then also a school anthology, and we solicited entries from other people in the school. And then my students became sort of the editors a little bit, and they got to select folks. They went and talked to the art classes. They put photos of that in there. So it became this, the school community showcase of of art. And they all had something in there, too.

And I think of when I did DCTV every week, they’d show their their final product on the school, you know, TV news show. Now, not everybody has a chance to do all of those things in their classrooms, but if you can find a way to make that learning go a little bit out the door to another classroom, to your whole school, or even the local community, boy, that just turbo charges it.

Winston Benjamin 26:12 Paul, that just something that you said, you said, how the students dressed and came to school for the day. This is going to be a—this is going to be a bad story, but it fits perfectly in how come we’re saying authentic learning, because I think authentic experiences do not just mean for the students, but it also is important for the teachers to recognize when they see an authentic learning experience happening and being willing to participate.

So I worked in a charter school called Phoenix Charter Academy. That was my first working experience in education, and we had a dress code: black and khaki pants, white button-down shirt. That’s it, right? Every day, students wore—the goal of the—the mission was to help students understand, like you said, Paul, they were going to go somewhere, they were going to have an interview, they were going to do great things, but we had a dress code.

This one student, Stefan Lafond, I remember him vividly. He had an interview for a scholarship after school, and he came in a suit, a suit, because he understood what we were saying about the importance of presentation. Do you know what happened to that young man as he walked into school? He got sent home. Dress code violation. He wasn’t in black or khaki pants or a white shirt, and the teachers who saw this young man did not recognize that he internalized the authentic message that we were saying to him, that it is important when you have something to do, you present yourself as if you matter. And the teachers were so caught with a method and not the mission, that they missed the entire learning experience.

So I think it’s not just—it’s important for us as educators to be open enough to see when students are really taking in those authentic messages and applying it around us, so that we can actually value what they’re doing. So when he wore that suit, I was so proud that he got the message that we were trying to teach him, right? And that was an authentic, yeah, it was. It may not have been in class in a room, but it was an important life skill and a life concept that he understood, that he tried to apply, and we stopped him from doing that.

Paul Beckermann 28:41 [A] learning moment there for, for even us educators.

Winston Benjamin 28:44 Absolutely, right? Authentic learning.

Paul Beckermann 28:47 All right, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do a quick one here. As professional facilitators, we are now helping teachers be guided through a learning experience. What has worked in your experience to make that kind of learning authentic?

Rena Clark 29:04 Why don’t you start this time, Paul? We’ll let you go first.

Paul Beckermann 29:07 I will, okay, I will. Maybe the best, most authentic learning experience I’ve had with educators is we had some cohorts of teachers that came together in an ongoing, regular collaborative basis. So I think all those things are important. It can’t just be a one and done. Teachers need ownership. There has to be some actionable output.

So one of them was blended learning. It was a blended learning cohort. All these teachers came to learn about blended learning. They collaborated with each other to create blended learning experiences for their students that they could actually take back to their classroom, apply, see how it went, come back to the cohort, share, get feedback, iterate, go back into the classroom, try again, ask the kids how it’s going, get feedback, iterate, try it again. That is real. It was collaborative. It was ongoing. That’s still one of my, my best memories of professional learning.

Rena Clark 30:12 I’m going to continue on that, because unfortunately, you may not—you might not have that available. And I’m going to say, with us, like budget cuts and ongoing things, unfortunately, we don’t have the opportunity sometimes. But if you can do ongoing, collaborative, meaningful professional learning, just like with our students, it’s ongoing, and you reiterate, that is the highest level of growth I’ve ever seen in professional learning.

So for example, and I was supporting, let’s say, in mathematics. So first we did deep learning around what—what are the math standards? Like, really understanding that, what are the math standards? Okay, and understanding different types of learning that happen in math. And then we’re applying that in our PLCs, and we’re breaking apart standards, and we’re deepening our understanding, and we’re understanding progressions, and we’re understanding, like I said, different types of learning.

And then we’re applying it, and we’re looking at student work, and we’re using that to inform our structure. And then we had lab days, so then we would do professional learning based on what we learned. So lab days mean, okay, we’re going to do professional learning. We’re going to learn about these new, but then we’re going to go enact that learning in the afternoon. So we’re going to learn about something, and then as a group, we’re going to go enact it in a real classroom with us, observing each other, and then go debrief and give feedback around it. And we’re going to continue this iterative process.

And our professional learning is going to be based on the feedback, the things that we learn and understand and continue to grow. Now we have a clear goal where we’re going, and the growth I’ve seen in that model is phenomenal. Like, that’s where I’ve really seen growth and change and deep change in learning.

However, yep, as I said, that might—that is not always an opportunity in a lot of places. So we have what we call, you know, a lot of one-off opportunities, or, as Winston said earlier, those one-off staff meetings. And you said something, Winston, like, if this doesn’t matter to me, my brain’s checked out of my body. So how, how, just like, for our students, what are the practices we can put in place so that it is more meaningful?

So that’s where I’m like, we need to demonstrate good teaching practices and professional learning. And like, when I’m doing professional learning and I have teachers, just like the students. And over here, I have elementary teachers in high school, and I got P.E. teachers and music teachers. Like, how am I making this so that it’s meaningful for all? And that’s kind of like Paul said. So I’m actually integrating blended learning in my professional learning. I’m providing structures. I’m giving choice to them. Maybe there’s a walk to. I’m very well prepared so that there is something for everybody, and when they walk out of that room, they have something that they can apply right away that’s meaningful for them.

Paul Beckermann 33:10 There is such power in that modeling. When you are facilitating professional learning, that is one of the greatest opportunities we have as educators to model and show how it can be done. We have to be at the highest level of excellence, I think, when we’re leading our fellow educators in those kinds of things.

And just a solution to your budget question, we did not have a budget in my previous district for that kind of a thing. But what we did is we had strands, staff staff development strands. So there was a series of three or four professional learning days throughout the year. We had to sign up for a strand. Each one of those days was a continuation of the strand. Rather than four one-offs, it was four parts of the same focus. That was, that was really effective within the constraints, you know, of that.

Rena Clark 34:01 Budget absolutely, yeah.

Winston Benjamin 34:03 I was thinking the same thing about like doing a PD over a long period of a couple of sessions instead of just one singular.

And mine really is focused on, I think sometimes teachers forget that there is a community outside of the building. Because we work in isolation with people who work in the same spaces, and sometimes it’s hard. So one thing that I’ve seen is an oral history project, and it seems big, but what it is is having a teacher go and pick two or three areas within the community and have a conversation with an individual, asking them, “What is the purpose of education, and how do you think a school can be valuable to it? And how do you think you can be a value to it?”

Having the teachers go around and get a context of like, what’s there, who’s around, what’s the… what’s the people? And actually… so the best part was that the community members saw the teachers walking around their neighborhood, and they could have a conversation, and they could reach them, and it wasn’t just, “Come to the building.” So it had a two-part value, right? So again, I think, you know what I mean.

And the presentations of that the teachers then had was like, “Oh, there’s this guy.” When they shared the information to everyone else, then that sparked, I hope, something to where another teacher is like, “Oh, I have an interest in that. I could talk to this person.” So I think it was like a research gathering, and also helping teachers step outside of the space of the building to actually value where students are are coming from, because a lot of times, many of us don’t live in the neighborhoods that our students live in. So to see value in those communities, I think also is valuable, because then we can see our students coming from something valuable, right? So I think those are several ways that that can impact. So that’s realistic to me.

Paul Beckermann 36:00 For sure.

Rena Clark 36:04 Well, instead of adding on, because I think what I have to add on is actually a tool to help you do it. Winston’s talking about, ah, I’m gonna help us jump into our toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 36:16 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? Toolkit. Check it out.

Rena Clark 36:24 I’m actually going to weirdly go first here, because it does connect to what Winston is saying, because a toolkit you might have is a community asset map. So I know some districts actually have these maps they might have, but some don’t.

And even working in the capacity of like admin, as you were talking about, having your staff, or even part of maybe your back-to-school days, doing a community asset mapping, or scavenger hunting, like going around and finding out what kind of resources are in the community, what assets do the community have? Is so powerful, and then it can connect to all those things we talked about, those authentic things. If we’re looking then for what are the community resources? Who are, who is the person? If my kids interested in this, they need to connect with someone. Or if I have this project like you were talking about, Winston, who is the person in my community that I might talk to, or how do I connect with them? Then I have this, you know, community asset map, and I know maybe who to talk to, or who I might be able to connect with. It’s and it can be really powerful.

Paul Beckermann 37:27 Absolutely, what’s what’s in your toolkit, Winston?

Winston Benjamin 37:32 For me, it’s standards. Like, [it] goes all the way back to the standards. Yo, like your standard is going to tell you, A, can they convince someone? Persuasive writing? Can they convince someone that about a topic that they care about? How can I do this differently? There you go. That’s that’s immediately the first question that you can ask yourself, “How can I focus on this standard and what kind of ways can I do it differently than just having them sit and write a piece of paper?” Right?

Paul Beckermann 38:04 Yeah, I would take that standard, too, Winston, and I’d I’d ask the question, “How would somebody apply that standard and those skills outside the walls of the classroom? What’s the real, authentic application of of that?” And then, “How can I best bring that into my classroom?” Is there a way to make another authentic audience, besides the teacher, or even besides the classmates? Take it a little bit beyond the walls, either an intent or an audience, and it’s a mindset thing, kind of like going back to what you said with the standards.

Winston Benjamin 38:39 Yeah, you got to understand it. But it’s time for that…

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 38:43 It’s time for that one thing. Time for that one thing.

Winston Benjamin 38:54 So, one thing, one thing. So after we’ve had this wonderful conversation, because, Rena, you’ve made me think about several different things that I was like, “Oh, that,” because now I have the the language to help explain specifically to teachers what I mean by authentic engagement, right? So what’s one of the… what’s the one thing that you’re you’re still bouncing around in your brain trying to process through, or would like someone else to think about? What is… what’s going on?

Rena Clark 39:22 I feel like often it’s a misconception that if kids are having fun, that they can’t do deep learning. Somehow those should be separate. And I feel like that is a missed opportunity. And I think of all the examples we talked about today, our own experiences, there was deep learning happening connected to standards, and it was fun. They shouldn’t be separate. You can have fun and have deep learning and connection to standards and get excited. And to me, that is authentic learning, and that’s where you’re helping kids find joy. And make those connections to, like, “Oh.” Because if we’re truly preparing kids for college and career, and you know, what they’re doing beyond high school, we can help them be like, “Oh, and it can be fun, and you could do deep learning.”

Paul Beckermann 40:17 Absolutely. And what I was just listening back to an episode with Kevin Honeycut when we had him on here earlier this year, and he kept saying, “If you tie learning to joy, like you were talking about, Rena, they will want to do it again and again and again and again, because it’s fun.”

Winston Benjamin 40:35 Listen, people put… people practice that do sports and have to put themselves through the ungodliest thing, but they put themselves through it because there’s a goal at the end. Like, if I prepare myself, I will do well at this game. So there’s a point of the end.

And for me, I think what Rena talked about earlier in terms of the authentic audience, and I think also the authentic feedback is something that matters, because just like in the game, you getting the feedback immediately, you getting booed, or you’re not—just like in the classroom, if you bring a teacher from outside of your room, you can also support students feeling like, “Somebody else is listening to me, not just my teacher,” right? And that could change just the who, the how students are engaged with it, because it’s not just you listening to them and telling them how, how to think. So I think that’s an important piece.

Rena Clark 41:36 It’s like being a parent. I swear my kids listen to everyone else better than me.

Paul Beckermann 41:41 You’re not the only one. People can’t see us when they’re listening, but if you were able to, you would see us be very animated as we’re telling these stories and remembering these things from our past, because they impacted us, and they impacted us personally, I think, because they were authentic and and they were such vivid learning experiences for us.

It goes back to that quote at the beginning: “What will you do on day one that will have your kids running back to your classroom on day two?” And I would say, and on day three and four and five. I think authentic learning is a really good start to that. So something to think about as you finish listening to the episode today, and thanks, Winston and Rena, for sharing your stories. [It] is great to hear those, and you too.

Rena Clark 42:33 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 42:35 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 42:50 We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education,

Rena Clark 42:55 and remember, “Go forth and be awesome.”

Winston Benjamin 42:59 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 43:00 You make a difference.