#508 – Cognitive Resilience, with Shelly Muñoz

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:

• Where might students be outsourcing important thinking in our classrooms?
• How can AI amplify thinking without replacing productive struggle?
• What would it look like to make student thinking more visible?
• How can we build more curiosity into everyday learning?
• Which assessments could better capture reasoning rather than just a final product?
• How can we strengthen students’ sense of cognitive belonging?
• What would help students become more independent when they encounter something unfamiliar?

• Architects of Cognitive Resilience: Reimagining Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (written by Shelly Muñoz)
• Taxonomies of Learning (The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning)
• Rethinking Education in the Age of AI (Lord Knight via Cambridge)

#508 Cognitive Resilience, with Shelly Muñoz

AVID Open Access
41 min

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.

Shelly Munoz 0:00 We don’t want young people just simply consuming machine-generated knowledge. We want them developing intellectual agency through this process. We want students leaving the building believing, “I can encounter something I don’t understand and figure out what to do next.”

Rena Clark 0:20 The topic for today’s podcast is Cognitive Resilience with Shelly Munoz. Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:50 I’m Paul Beckermann,

Winston Benjamin 0:51 and I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators,

Paul Beckermann 0:55 and we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:59 Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark 1:04 Our quote for today comes from our guest Shelly Munoz’s book, Architects of Cognitive Resilience: Reimagining Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In the foreword, Shelly writes, “For the first time in history, students are not just outsourcing answers; they are outsourcing thinking itself.”

Paul Beckermann 1:27 Wow, outsourcing thinking—that is what is on a lot of teachers’ minds these days, right? It is definitely a factor and a challenge for students too, to resist some of that and not take the easy way out. If they do take the easy way out, what does that mean for their future? It might be easier today, but are they tough enough to face those challenges down the road?

I really like that subtitle on the book: Reimagining Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. That is a really important and potentially overwhelming task, but I’m excited to have that conversation because we have to face that truth and think about what we’re doing in our schools.

Rena Clark 2:11 So many educators are wrestling with this right now as we get back to school. Students have always had tools to find resources to answer questions, but for the first time, they have something that is actually answering the question and processing the work. It doesn’t mean it’s bad; it’s just how we are going to have to reimagine teaching and learning as a result of AI.

How do we still drive curiosity and critical thinking when it is only a click away, especially for many of our young people whose brains aren’t fully developed to make some of those better decisions? You talk about how it’s really hard for them to understand the future in the now. So, how are we supporting them?

Paul Beckermann 2:51 Right, the future might be Friday.

Rena Clark 2:54 Exactly. That is why I’m really excited to have Shelly Munoz here on the podcast with us today. Shelly is the STEM curriculum coordinator at Brainerd Public Schools in Minnesota. She’s also the author of the book we just quoted from, Architects of Cognitive Resilience: Reimagining Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. I’m really glad to have Shelly here to talk with us today. Welcome, Shelly.

Shelly Munoz 3:19 Thank you so much.

Rena Clark 3:22 Just as a tiny introduction, we’d love for our listeners to ground themselves and know a little bit more about you and what you do.

Shelly Munoz 3:32 I spent about 30 years in education, much of that time in STEM education, really delving into curriculum. I have always been an advocate of student thinking. In the latter part of my career, I really leaned into instructional leadership—specifically culturally responsive instructional leadership.

Most of my career has been spent in the science classroom, so many of my examples move forward with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Not to say that this isn’t relevant for any subject, but I want to shout out to AVID. I remember having the fortunate ability to be at a conference in San Diego—the first AVID conference I ever went to—and hearing Mary Catherine Swanson speak about the benefit of AVID. It rocked my world and was one of the transformational things that veered my career in another direction.

I was also fortunate enough to be contracted with AVID to write the AVID STEM connections on the website. Myself and a wonderful team of people wrote those. I will probably be one of the biggest cheerleaders for AVID. Go team!

Paul Beckermann 5:17 I think Rena might have been part of that process as well.

Shelly Munoz 5:21 I think you were too. When I saw you, I thought, “You look so familiar.”

Rena Clark 5:25 Yes, we got to write some of those STEM connections as well. I’m right there with you with all the STEM examples.

Shelly Munoz 5:32 I love it. I just wanted to plug the book because a lot of things came out of it. This is what brought me here: being able to share thoughts on what AI means for the future of education. The book grew out of a question: what happens when learning the answers becomes almost effortless to obtain? A kid can put any worksheet into AI and have the answers. That’s why I’m here and where our conversation will glean today.

Paul Beckermann 6:11 That leads to my question. Part of what we’re doing is what your book says: reimagining and rethinking the purpose of education. How do you think the purpose of education has changed, especially in recent decades? With the introduction of AI, what are you seeing in your philosophy or thoughts about that?

Shelly Munoz 6:34 That’s a really exciting thing to talk about. In my current role, I visit many classrooms, and I’m still seeing that 1956 Bloom’s model. That model was really based on knowledge. Back then, knowledge was really hard to obtain. If we wanted to write a research paper, we would have to go to the library. It might take months or a year to obtain all that information. Knowledge was the key.

I’m certainly not disparaging Bloom’s taxonomy because it was amazing and helped us look at knowledge and how to go up a hierarchy to reach evaluation. Unfortunately, what I’m still seeing in classrooms today is that we start with that knowledge point, move up the pyramid to evaluation, and then we’re done.

Around the 2000s, Bloom 3.0 emerged, which focused on action. It was a good movement forward where we encouraged kids to remember and then move up to an action item. We went from nouns to verbs. But as we know, the world has continuously changed. With AI and the opportunities of our current students, I really want to encourage everyone to think about metacognition—thinking about thinking.

At one point, knowledge was amazing, but now we have it at our fingertips in seconds. Action was great, and we talk about other beautiful pedagogical frameworks in my book, but I come up with a new framework that helps the synthesis of moving through thinking. I hope we can instill curiosity, judgment, sense-making, creativity, perspective, and wisdom to help students move past just clicking something into AI and instead ask meaningful questions.

Rena Clark 9:09 I love that. I want to dig in a little bit more into the cognitive resilience framework. How should an educator use it?

Shelly Munoz 9:23 The history of education has always been built around accessing knowledge. Most of our teaching programs were taught exactly that way. We are taught to be the “sage on the stage” who holds the knowledge and disperses it to students, who then memorize it and take a test.

In how the world has changed, we have to change our own pedagogical approach. It’s not so much being that sage anymore; it’s about being the “guide on the side,” helping students articulate and guiding them through. As an educator, some of my most brilliant lessons were when I didn’t know much about the topic at all. I learned with the students and experienced the phenomena of learning, thinking, and questioning with them.

That’s where the book is going: how do we create that? Internet and AI have fundamentally changed everything. Information is everywhere. AI doesn’t simply give us access to information; it can interpret, synthesize, generate, explain, and create it. We have to create scenarios in our classrooms to help teachers, administrators, and students access thinking.

The framework helps them synthesize that knowledge to reach what I consider the highest knowledge: wisdom. It used to be innovation for me in my STEM career, but now I’ve taken that one step further. We went from knowledge scarcity to information abundance, but now I’m asking for intelligence on demand.

Paul Beckermann 11:56 Could you back up just half a step? What are the actual tiers of your model?

Shelly Munoz 12:07 It’s critical to start with curiosity. That goes along with science and NGSS, starting with a phenomenon. I just want kids to be curious. If I tell you something, what curiosity does that spark in you? What do you wonder? What do you notice? But let’s go deeper: why do you think that?

The next step is exploration, which can be messy. Let the kids explore without giving them too much information. Give them opportunities to explore their curiosity.

The next would be sense-making. This is where AI comes in handy because you can use prompts that challenge students to argue different aspects of their thinking. Am I on the right track?

Through that, I’m a big advocate of integration. How does science connect to technology, engineering, mathematics, and even AVID skills like WICOR? That is true thinking for students—not just popping a worksheet into AI for answers.

Lastly, we reach innovation. How do they articulate and synthesize the information they’ve learned to create something?

The step beyond that is wisdom. We want students to think outside the box. Who is being affected by this learning? What perspectives might I not be considering? What voices aren’t at the table? As we go through that framework, we’re really helping the kids think. The beauty of it is that you can’t just pop it into AI for an answer. It’s something we’ve constructed to build that resiliency and articulation of thinking.

Rena Clark 15:28 That’s a lot, and I love it. For educators just beginning to understand things themselves, what might be a simple place to start?

Shelly Munoz 15:45 Start with curiosity. In a science classroom, we look at phenomena. Let me think of an example. Suppose we ask: “Should our community replace part of a local natural area with a new housing development?”

When starting with curiosity, I want to prompt students with, “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” But then ask, “What would you need to know before you have an informed opinion?” I love “notice and wonder” because it is equitable; regardless of where students are, they can notice something.

As we build that through the year, we can ask: Who owns that land? Is there a housing shortage? What wildlife might be there? Who could afford these new houses? What do nearby residents think? Are there historical connections? What happens to water runoff?

We help our kids dive into strong questions. The magic for teachers is that if you’re stuck, ask AI. It will come up with amazing ideas for you. It’s a win-win for students and for you because you look brilliant in front of the classroom. But what’s important is that AI didn’t generate those specific final thoughts; you are facilitating and coaching your kids to get there.

Paul Beckermann 18:14 Let’s bring AI into the mix. What is the difference between AI as amplification and AI as replacement?

Shelly Munoz 18:30 There’s an important distinction. Replacement says AI can think for me, but amplification says AI can help me think further. In my work, that’s where AI is a great asset. I don’t want it to think for me, but I want it to help me amplify my ideas.

Replacement removes the productive cognitive struggle that develops learning. Amplification expands what a person can investigate, imagine, test, compare, create, and understand. It’s a tool that takes a small idea and catapults it into something big.

Instead of saying, “Write my argument,” a student might develop an argument and then say, “Challenge my reasoning. What perspective am I missing? What evidence contradicts my position?” Language arts teachers often feel AI is just writing the essays. If so, have students use AI to challenge their reasoning instead. The goal isn’t necessarily less AI; the goal is more human cognitive association along with AI. Don’t outsource the thinking you’re trying to develop.

Paul Beckermann 20:34 That’s a T-shirt right there. “Don’t outsource the thinking you’re trying to develop.”

Shelly Munoz 20:40 I see that every single day.

Rena Clark 20:48 I’m also thinking about how AI will be changing assessments. Traditionally, we’ve had assessment one way, and many ELA teachers are nervous.

Shelly Munoz 21:12 That’s one of the best questions. I think assessment will undergo one of the largest transformations in our educational landscape. I live in Minnesota, where we have the MCA for accountability. There’s been a lot of scrutiny lately because many students are opting out. Is that a great measurement?

For many years, we’ve assessed the artifact—the essay, project, or presentation. AI moves us toward making our thinking visible. I think we’ll see more emphasis on conversation and defensive thinking. We’ll have more iterations, portfolios, reflections, performance tasks, and observations.

My biggest hope is that a student can show me how their thinking changed. They can explain the steps they took through the cognitive framework. Another shift might be asking, “Where did AI influence your thinking, and where did you disagree with it?” Sometimes I have absolutely disagreed with AI, and it made my own thinking better or changed the route I was going.

Rena Clark 23:43 Or it just agrees with you, and you want it to disagree.

Paul Beckermann 23:46 Right.

Shelly Munoz 23:46 Or sometimes it makes me feel foolish, and I think, “Yeah, that was a good idea.”

Paul Beckermann 23:56 Thinking about thinking, you talk about something called cognitive belonging. What is that and why does it matter?

Shelly Munoz 24:06 If anyone takes anything away from our conversation today, I hope it is this. We talk a lot about students feeling social and emotional belonging, which is essential. But there’s another dimension: do students believe their minds belong in learning?

For a student to have safety in the classroom, they need to feel that even if their answer is wrong or doesn’t align with everyone else, it is a secure place to share. Cognitive belonging means a student believes: “My questions matter. My experience matters. My ideas are worth exploring. My way of making meaning has value. I am able to contribute intellectually here.”

That is crucial to this framework because culturally responsive teaching becomes deeply integrated into cognitive resilience. It’s setting up the safety that it is safe to think. We’ve all sat in staff meetings afraid to speak because we might be wrong. Those places need to be safe. When their histories, cultures, and experiences become legitimate sources of learning, students understand that they can be knowledge creators. We don’t want young people just consuming machine-generated knowledge; we want them developing intellectual agency.

Paul Beckermann 26:50 I love that.

Rena Clark 26:51 What are some of the most important skills our students will need to be successful in their futures?

Shelly Munoz 27:03 I admire teachers more than anything, and education has become increasingly demanding. But we have to take a strong look at our students. Their futures are changing exponentially and are so different than the ones we inherited.

I move away from a simple list and focus on “future-ready” skills. Students can find how to fix anything on YouTube; they don’t need us to teach those specific tasks. They need cognitive adaptability. The tools they use at 18 will look completely different by the time they’re 26. In the realm of AI, change is happening so fast.

I want to encourage educators to help kids ask better questions, remain curious, and learn something unfamiliar. We must help them distinguish credible information from convincing information. We need to help them make connections across disciplines and perspectives—to be pattern-seekers. They must learn to collaborate with humans and machines.

How do you tolerate uncertainty? How do you change your mind when evidence changes? In science, we always talked about cell theory as what we knew at the time, but it could change. We need to set our students up for that. How do we help them create ethical judgment? It comes down to agency. We want students leaving the building believing, “I can encounter something I don’t understand and figure out what to do next.”

Rena Clark 30:43 I love that.

Shelly Munoz 30:43 That’s the hope and the goal.

Paul Beckermann 30:46 All those things are baked into the model you created. Without that, they will never reach the innovation and wisdom at the top.

Shelly Munoz 30:59 When kids leave, I want them to be able to encounter something they don’t understand and figure out what to do next.

Paul Beckermann 31:20 Last question: what have we not asked you about that you wish we had?

Shelly Munoz 31:36 I think a lot about thinking. What happens if AI gets better at thinking while humans get less practice doing it? What happens when our kiddos haven’t been given a framework to push forward in their thinking?

Paul Beckermann 32:10 Maybe they growl.

Shelly Munoz 32:14 I hope you don’t hear my dog barking as we say that. That’s an amazing synchronicity of timing.

Paul Beckermann 32:20 I do hear that, which is why I said it.

Shelly Munoz 32:23 I’m less worried about whether students know how to use AI and more about whether they inadvertently create learning environments where they become dependent. Ideas, interpretation, creativity, and judgment are our human capacities. That’s the gift we have as humans, and it is the human capacity that AI will never take from us.

Rena Clark 33:12 We’ve had a lot to think about. We’re going to move into our next section: the toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 33:20 Check it out! What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Rena Clark 33:31 Paul, let’s start with you.

Paul Beckermann 33:33 I love the taxonomy Shelly shared, shooting for innovation and wisdom at the top. It made me think of a model Dr. Catlin Tucker recently came out with—a tiered approach to AI to ensure students retain the “thinking obligation.”

In grades K–3, students learn those skills offline without AI—human-to-human. In grades 4–6, AI is introduced in a safe, contained environment like SchoolAI. In middle school, grades 7–9, they apply skills in a more open environment with increased student control to learn metacognition. In high school, grades 10–12, they take the lead in their learning, ensuring work is strategic, transparent, and accountable. I think those models marry together really well.

Shelly Munoz 35:19 I do too. In STEM, we focus on CTE and helping kids be ready for employment. Having that incremented throughout education is amazing.

Paul Beckermann 35:44 What do you have, Rena?

Rena Clark 35:46 Along similar lines, I have a “productive struggle checklist.” It goes back to making thinking visible. Did I try it before I asked AI? Did I explain my reasoning? Can I explain it on my own? Did I actually verify it? So many students take it at face value. Did I use it to improve my own thinking, and can I explain it without AI? That’s a good self-check.

Paul Beckermann 36:30 That is a good litmus test. Did they actually learn?

Shelly Munoz 36:39 The ultimate thing is that we want kids to reach that hierarchy of wisdom. Do they have the skills to question the validity of the information they receive? The future of education isn’t about them becoming better “answerers”; it’s about them becoming architects of their own thinking.

Paul Beckermann 37:01 Shelly, you get a chance to drop something in the toolkit as well.

Shelly Munoz 37:09 AI has made answers and knowledge abundant. Education must make curiosity, discernment, meaning, and wisdom indispensable. We need to grow our professional communities of practice. I know together we can.

Paul Beckermann 37:48 I love that.

Shelly Munoz 37:49 I look at the AVID WICOR process as a wonderful way of connecting all of that.

Paul Beckermann 38:00 It’s time for our “one thing.”

Rena Clark 38:04 It’s time for that one thing.

Paul Beckermann 38:14 Final takeaways. Shelly, we’ll have you go last. Rena, let’s start with you.

Rena Clark 38:30 It comes down to how we can make thinking visible. How do we create situations and an environment where that feels safe for everyone?

Paul Beckermann 38:49 I’m thinking of the visual of the pyramid Shelly put together with wisdom at the top and curiosity at the bottom. Wisdom starts with curiosity.

Shelly Munoz 39:07 I’ll say it one more time: don’t outsource the thinking you’re trying to develop. In every PLC and every meeting, we should always ask, “What thinking do I want the students to do here?” Not necessarily what I want them to know or answer on a test, but what thinking do I want to occur?

Rena Clark 39:39 Thank you for joining us and making us do some thinking. Shelly’s book is Architects of Cognitive Resilience: Reimagining Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

Shelly Munoz 39:59 It’s on Amazon. Thank you so much.

Rena Clark 40:04 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 40:07 Visit us at avidopenaccess.org to discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity.

Rena Clark 40:20 Remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 40:24 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 40:27 You make a difference.