[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Lauren Porosoff. Lauren is the founder of EmpowerForwards, a collaborative consultancy practice that builds learning communities that truly belong to everyone and where everyone truly belongs. Lauren has 18 years of teaching experience and has also served as a DEI coordinator, grade level dean, and leader of curricular initiatives. Her commitment to transforming the psychological experience of school has been a constant in her teaching practice, leading her to learn about values-guided behavior change in contextual psychology. Informed by research and practice, as well as her 18 years as a teacher, Lauren develops tools and protocols that empower students and teachers to make school a source of meaning, vitality, and community, as we'll see as we talk about her new book, Teach for Authentic Engagement.
[00:59] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[01:01] SPEAKER_01:
Lauren, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[01:03] SPEAKER_00:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[01:04] SPEAKER_01:
I wanted to start by asking what motivated you to write the book? What was going on in your research and your work? And what did you see going on in the profession that led you to write Teach for Authentic Engagement?
[01:17] SPEAKER_00:
You know, that's a good question because that book is really sort of the culmination of really all of my years as an educator. What's really always been important to me is to make school engaging, to make school a place that students want to be, where they feel like they can pursue not just what's interesting to them, but what's important and gain a sense of vitality from doing their work and from developing a community with each other. And so I've leaned into various ways of achieving that, whether it's through curriculum design or social emotional learning, which really in my work focuses on values. But this book, Teach for Authentic Engagement, that's really the end goal is to not just sort of add something on or, you know, insert something into the curriculum or give students like an extra thing, an extra field trip or advisory.
[02:14]
All of those can be important. But to me, instructional design is really where it's at so that it's not just outside of class or in one particular unit, but every single day when students show up to class. that they can make it meaningful, that they can participate as their full selves.
[02:31] SPEAKER_01:
So important. And I feel like that's something that historically we've taken for granted because school is compulsory, right? The students are supposed to show up whether they want to or not, whether we make it engaging or not, whether we engage them in meaning making or not. Kids are kind of supposed to show up no matter what. And I remember my colleague Dave Burgess saying years ago, you know, what if students didn't have to come to school? How would we teach if students didn't have to come to school?
[02:56]
And we had to kind of talk them into it by what we do. in the classroom and i think one of the things that we've seen post pandemic is that a lot of kids realize they don't have to come to school or we're not succeeding in making them come to school and i'm hearing from so many teachers i've got students with 40 absences i've had students with 80 unexcused absences last year so this is no longer hypothetical right this possibility of students not coming to school if if it's not meaningful for them Talk to us a little bit about that sense of kind of what students are seeking and getting out of being in school. Like if we set aside the compulsory aspect, help us think about engaging students in school so that they actually do want to show up.
[03:37] SPEAKER_00:
You know, it's funny because I've gotten the same feedback. I gave a workshop maybe about a month ago where there was a behavior scientist, a BCBA who attended. And she said, you know, this work really resonates because all of my traditional incentive systems are not working with students anymore. They won't work for points. They won't work so they can go shopping in the school store. They're not even interested in their grades anymore.
[04:04]
They really need a different reason to come to school. And so that's where my emphasis on values comes in. Values, as I define it in my work, are the qualities that we most want to bring to our actions. Things like creativity, curiosity, compassion, other ones that don't start with the letter C. So like school can be an opportunity for students to be creative if that's what's important to them to, you know, demonstrate compassion toward each other and even towards the things they're studying about. And it's not just about like, let's find out what this kid is interested in.
[04:42]
Oh, they're interested in baseball. So now they're going to write an essay about baseball. It's more about sort of evoking from every student, what's important to you? What do you want to sound like as a writer? You know, what's important to you in the world and how can you figure that out and not just, you know, study what seems to be interesting right now or play a game that sounds like it's going to be fun, but maybe won't be fun for every single student and tap into what's important in students' communities and their lives and make school about pursuing that.
[05:19] SPEAKER_01:
And I feel like almost everybody would agree that that's a worthy set of goals, but I think we also feel a tension between that and teaching the content that we have to, right? Like if I have a student who's interested in baseball, I'm great, I may be able to use that, but at the same time, the student's going to have to learn stuff that's not baseball, right? How do we manage that tension?
[05:37] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, exactly. So if I taught English and there doesn't happen to be a book about baseball, like how am I going to hook that student, right? So it's not just about bringing their outside interests into the classroom. It's great when we can do that. I talk about this in the chapter on connective prompts, right? Just because a kid likes baseball doesn't mean we'll be able to bring it in.
[05:56]
Sometimes the student doesn't even want that. Like my son... doesn't like it when his teachers talk about his outside interests. He wants there to be a separation between what he's interested in at home and what he's doing in school.
[06:09]
And so what I talk about in the book is it's a chapter, I call it Connective Prompts. It's about how to design the kinds of questions that will help students, first of all, connect the content to themselves, whether it's like, what would you do if you were in this situation? Or how do you imagine your community might benefit from your doing this work? So it's connecting it to them, but it's also providing ways for them to connect to it, whether it's by using their imaginations to think about possibilities or rearranging components or just finding something meaningful to say about it.
[06:54] SPEAKER_01:
So you call those connective prompts in the book, is that correct?
[06:57] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
[06:58] SPEAKER_01:
Okay, but they're not strictly writing prompts necessarily.
[07:01] SPEAKER_00:
Not necessarily. I mean, I do use a lot of writing to think, but they don't have to be writing prompts. They can be discussion prompts. They can be drawing prompts, acting out prompts, laboratory prompts. It really is about helping the students, again, make the connection between who I am, where I am, when I am in history to the content, and then finding ways to explore the content, I call them exploratory prompts, where there can't be a wrong answer. Like if you give me a math problem, it's going to have a right answer.
[07:36]
If you ask me a question about chemistry, right, like protons, neutrons, and like electrons, it's the right answer. But exploratory prompts have no right answer because there's no wrong way to notice the features of something. There's no wrong way to imagine, you know, possibilities in something. There's no wrong way to speculate on where an author might be going or what might have happened differently in history had some event not occurred. So...
[08:06]
It's really a way to help all students connect because they can't do it wrong. What I say to my students is the only way to do it wrong is to not do it at all.
[08:15] SPEAKER_01:
One format that has always seemed to me to lend itself to that type of engaging work is writing, right? If students are doing some sort of writing prompt, we might find opportunities for that. Sometimes, though, for those of us who have taught other subjects... finding those opportunities might seem a little bit more difficult.
[08:35]
I trained to be a high school chemistry teacher and ended up teaching middle school science, but I can't think of a lot of obvious ways to do that in high school chemistry. So especially for teachers who say don't teach writing as a distinct subject, what are some of the ways that you empower educators to find those ways to connect with students?
[08:54] SPEAKER_00:
first of all, I would say that just because writing isn't something that a teacher teaches, right? Like even if you're not teaching students how to write, writing as a means of exploration can be useful in any subject. It might not be something that let's say a chemistry or a math teacher is as familiar with or comfortable with, but that doesn't mean that they can't ask the same type of question they might ask in a discussion because but first ask students to explore it on paper because their notebooks can be a sort of private space where they can explore their own thinking, where they can see their thinking manifest in front of them. And it doesn't have to be writing. It could be drawing. It could be making a graph, but just some way of literally seeing what they think by having it manifest in front of them.
[09:46]
And then writing doesn't have to be the only way. So using multiple modalities is really important for engaging students, having them have a discussion or, you know, create something, draw, even using Play-Doh. I've seen teachers do great things with Play-Doh just as, again, a way of physically manifesting their thinking in the world. Making little balls to represent different kinds of atoms, right? Or the parts of the atomic shell. That can be a way to have students physically engage, right?
[10:17]
They're physically using their hands. And that can help them also intellectually and then socially engage as well. So it doesn't have to be writing, but I would say I wouldn't be afraid of writing just because it's not traditionally part of the discipline.
[10:31] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Lauren, one thing you talk quite a bit about in the book that I wanted to ask about is the idea of connecting to values and maybe getting away from so much of an emphasis on compliance or points, but really connecting to students' values. Talk about how students' values play into their work.
[10:48] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I think sometimes the behavior sciences get a bad rap because we associate them with awarding points and incentivizing work, you know, by having them work for a class party or pizza or a little toy that they get at the end of the week. And we make the work about getting enough points in order to get that reward. But the behavior sciences actually have a lot to offer. My work actually comes out of the behavior sciences. It's called contextual behavioral science. And it's not that our behaviors aren't incentivized.
[11:26]
It's really thinking differently about what an incentive is. So that instead of working for a little sticker or a little toy or candy, or even working for like, we're gonna have fun Friday and we're gonna play games to learn, right? It's not so much about working for that extrinsic reward. It's more about the incentive, the reward of the work is in the process of doing the work itself. So I'm gonna feel a sense of meaning and satisfaction and fulfillment, not after I get some extrinsic outcome, but in the process of doing the work itself.
[12:06] SPEAKER_01:
Love that. You talk in the book about engaging students with the content so it becomes a source of meaning in their lives, engage with their work so it becomes a source of vitality, and engage with each other so the class becomes a source of community. And I want to make sure we talk about each of those, but let's talk a little bit more about engaging with their work so that it becomes a source of vitality. Say a little bit more about that, if you would.
[12:30] SPEAKER_00:
It's interesting because for some teachers, the difference between the content and the work can be a little bit blurry. For me, when I was growing up, I loved my science classes. I loved to learn anything about science. But in terms of engaging with the work, writing up a lab report or doing a problem set or answering a series of questions, like what I was actually doing with the science content, that wasn't what I was most interested in doing. What I was most interested in, surprise, surprise, is writing and became a writer. And so for me, when I was most when I found the greatest sense of vitality, when I felt the greatest sense of aliveness was when I got to write.
[13:13]
And it was mostly with assignments that teachers sometimes refer to as creative writing, although I think we can bring creativity to any type of assignment. But opportunities that I had to use my voice to express what was important to me, to try out different genres, that was what brought me a sense of vitality. I think that It doesn't have to necessarily be that just students doing what they like to do is what brings them vitality. I think we can also find ways to help students choose topics that matter to them. So they're writing, maybe they don't like writing, but they're writing about a topic that's important. Or I always hated making posters.
[13:56]
And it was the 80s, so we made lots of posters. Now it's more electronic, right? But for me, I hated doing that. But if it was on a topic that was important to me, then I might put more thought into what I did. And then there's a chapter on empowering work processes. So how to structure and stage the assignment so that when students are working on it, they're really focused on what they're doing in the moment, as opposed to kind of looking down the road at what the end product is and then getting that over with as quickly as possible.
[14:30]
It's more about, OK, you know, before they even find out what the assignment is, let's clarify what the topic is going to be so that it matters to them. Then once they know their topic, practice starting out the project in a couple of different ways so they don't feel like they're stuck in one particular way. giving them what I call responsive feedback, where we're responding to the work itself as opposed to evaluative feedback when we're telling them this is what's good, this is what you need to work on. So they feel like, oh, I'm doing something that actually is creating an emotional response or that's reminding the person who's looking at it of something that matters in their lives. And we're forming a connection in the process of looking at this piece of work together. That can really sort of activate students in a positive way.
[15:24]
So it's not just here's the assignment. I'm going to do it as quickly as I can to get it over with. And I'm going to turn it in. And if I care about my grade, I'm going to try to make it better so that it's less about. Like, yes, they're doing schoolwork, but it almost makes it feel less like schoolwork and more like I'm doing something that's important. I'm making an actual impact in my community.
[15:48]
This is the kind of work that doesn't just occur in school, right? Like, yeah, it's important to give them things like essays and problem sets, but it's also something that could exist in the real world and actually does make an impact on other people, even if that's just the classmate that read it and my teachers.
[16:06] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I wanted to ask a little bit about audience because when I treated myself as the only audience for students' work, I always found it very disappointing when I would hand their work back and then I would see them throw it in the trash out the door. As a middle school student, you don't necessarily see any reason to hang on to your work. So seeing those binders full of work go in the trash at the end of the semester is always just kind of like, ugh. Kind of heartbreaking. How do we think more broadly about audience rather than just see ourselves as the only audience? You know, you're going to turn your work into me.
[16:36]
I'm going to grade it. And then that's going to be the end of it. I mean, saying it that way, it doesn't really seem that surprising that students would not really see a lot of meaning in that type of work. But I love what you said about engaging students emotionally, engaging students with their values. Help us think more about that kind of question of audience and like who they're doing the work for.
[16:54] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I mean, first of all, if they're not engaged with it themselves, then why do it for anyone else? But I think that having them imagine an audience is important. I think forcing them to show it to an audience can be coercive and it can shut students down. Like they might not want to reveal something personal about themselves if they know that certain people are going to be looking at it. And I actually had students in my middle school classroom say, are we going to have to show these to other people or can we choose who our peer reviewers are? Are you going to tell my parents about this?
[17:30]
Right. Or we used to do like a writing contest where you could send it into a magazine, but they asked, do we have to? And the answer is no, but write it as if you were going to. You know, pretend that you're going to submit it. You know, imagine the readers of this magazine. And so having an imagined audience for their work, but not coercing them into having an audience, I think that sort of strikes that middle ground between protecting their privacy, protecting their agency, And also at the same time, giving them the kind of assignment for work that exists in the real world so that they could imagine like, oh, I'm writing an article.
[18:10]
People read articles. I had a student who, this was actually an independent study that I did with a student her senior year. She had auditory processing disorder and she wanted to learn more about disabilities, including APD. because she'd always been living with it. And she ended up as a project writing an article for teachers to help them design classrooms that were more conducive to students with APD. She always had to like take very detailed notes, almost not even listening, just writing down everything she heard so she could then review it later in a quiet environment.
[18:50]
And it was just so much more labor for her. And so I asked her, what could your teachers have done differently? And so she wrote this article. And, you know, for her, that really helped her engage. I mean, it was an independent study, so she was already engaged, but it helped her think about the work in a different way than if she had just been writing a paper, you know, about APD that only I would see. So imagining an audience, like who's going to see this and how is it going to make an impact beyond the classroom, I think makes a difference.
[19:24] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Lauren, in addition to engaging with real or imagined audiences outside the classroom, you also talk quite a bit in the book about getting students to engage with one another. Take us into some of that.
[19:39] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I feel like that was a piece of the early work that I'd been doing on curriculum design and instructional design was sort of missing that element. And I joined Twitter back when it was still called Twitter and back when it was a more open and engaging platform. And one of the hashtags that I saw among educators was build relationships, build relationships with students. And yes, it's really important for teachers to build relationships with students. And at the same time, are we creating an environment where they can build relationships with each other? And then I also saw a lot about collaboration.
[20:20]
And when I first started teaching group projects and table groups where they could discuss ideas with each other, that was all really important to me. But then students hate group projects because there's always a free rider and there's always someone who ends up doing all the work. And in group discussions, there's always someone monopolizing the conversation and someone who gets left out and someone who kind of leaves themselves out. And so I thought, How can we create a dynamic in the classroom where the work that they're doing together becomes almost a springboard for them to build relationships with each other? That it's not just something that we hope might happen. That they actually build relationships and a sense of community in the process of doing meaningful work together.
[21:13]
And if we want that to happen, we need to make sure that their interactions are structured to make it more likely. So like giving them a protocol that they can use to have a productive conversation. Giving them a structure for having discussions in class where everyone's going to participate equitably. Giving them tools so that instead of just telling them, like, you should listen to each other, use full body listening, look at each other, which actually can be culturally problematic. giving them concrete tools so that they do listen to each other, so that they do create work that everyone is going to contribute to, rather than just telling them, you all better contribute because your grade depends on it.
[21:59] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I love that mention of protocols because, you know, just kind of shoving students' desks together and saying your grade is the same across all three or four of you and like creating this kind of free rider dynamics, you know, like we've all been there and we've all found that to be kind of an eye rolling experience. Just let me do my own work. So talk a little bit more about like what students get from one another and give to one another in that setting. Because I think like every adult remembers that experience of group work that just kind of felt like, okay, you made me work with them. I don't really like them. Now my grade is lower.
[22:37]
I had to do extra work that I would have to do. And they got away with something. Talk to us more about that. that idea of protocols and what students are, you know, kind of exchanging by engaging with one another in that way.
[22:48] SPEAKER_00:
So your point about what do they give to and get from each other in the book, I talk about how if they're doing work together, then there needs to be reciprocity and synergy. Reciprocity meaning, you know, I'm going to contribute something to the group and I'm going to get something from the group. And we need protocols to make sure that actually the assignment is structured in such a way that it's not possible to do it unless everyone gives something to the group and everyone gets something from the group. Because otherwise, why shouldn't I just do it by myself? I might be able to get it done faster, more accurately and better. And then synergy.
[23:29]
So the group needs to create something that is somehow more than the sum of what any one person might be able to do together. So the example that I give in the book is the jigsaw method, right? Where like, you know, let's say we're each learning about a different region of the US and then we all come back and we sort of give each other the information. We summarize the information for each other. And now everyone in the group has learned about each region of the US. So that's an example of a task that's reciprocal, but not synergistic.
[24:02]
We're all giving something to the group. We're all getting something from the group. But we could all go off and do it on our own. And in fact, I might even find it easier to do it on my own than have to listen to my classmates and wonder if they did a good job. Something synergistic would be if we gave them a prompt to do something together with the contributions that they've all made. So one of the protocols in the book, I call it distinguish and define, where you give students a series of prompts where they're asked to think about a concept they're studying.
[24:37]
Let's say it's rivers. You know, what is a river? Draw a picture of a river. And now what are some other different kinds of bodies of water? When they might think of lakes, oceans, bays, right? And draw pictures of those.
[24:51]
And now come together in a group and based on what everyone drew, write a definition of a river. So they all do something individually on their own that they can then bring to the group that's built into the protocol. But then in their groups, they're not just sharing, they're doing something together that sort of rises up from the work that they've all done individually. And that's an important piece of it because then they're taking what every other member of the group said into account.
[25:23] SPEAKER_01:
I love that because it's more than just turn taking, right? It's more than just you say your thing and then I'll say my thing and then we've all had a turn and then it's over with. It's both reciprocal. As you said, there's reciprocity, but then there's also synergy in that the final product is more than everybody had their turn or everybody did their piece. There's a combination effect to it. Well, Lauren, I love everything that you've been saying, and it sounds wonderful, and it sounds like exactly what I want for my kids.
[25:54]
It sounds like what you want and would create for your own kids. But I also feel like we have kind of a two-tiered system in our society where there are kids who get this kind of wonderful education because of the environment that they live in and who their parents are and what neighborhood they live in and what schools they attend. and other kids who get basic skills who are thought to maybe not be capable or ready for the type of learning that we're talking about. But I get the sense that this is for everyone and valuable for everyone and powerful for everyone.
[26:27] SPEAKER_00:
I feel like The conversations that I hear about this, it's almost backward logic. It's these kids. And who do we mean? Like, what is that code for? It's code for black and brown kids. It's code for kids who are in rural districts, who are in less resource districts, kids with disabilities.
[26:49]
They're, quote unquote, not ready. to be engaging at this high a level. They're not ready to choose their own topics. They're not even ready to write essays or make science posters. We need to focus on quote unquote basic skills, right? Because they're not ready.
[27:04]
To me, that's backwards. To me, if we give them engaging work, if we give them prompts that help them connect to the content, then they will connect to the content. if we give them affirming assignments that regard and respect who they are, they will rise to the occasion of being able to work on that assignment. If we're afraid like, oh, they're not well-behaved enough to do a protocol, well, if we keep giving them collaborative protocols, if we set up discussions so that they will participate, they'll learn how to participate. They will learn how to do whatever tasks we assign in the classroom. They will sink into whatever routines we give them.
[27:51]
And if the routines are basic skills, boring work, rote memorization, that's what they're going to learn how to do. If we give them compliance-based systems, they're going to learn how to comply. My son goes to a PBIS school. And when he comes home in the afternoon and I ask him, what did you do today? He shows me his point sheet. And I'm like, but what did you learn today?
[28:19]
And I'm like, he's like, I don't know. And it wasn't always that way. When he went to a school where he didn't have points, he wasn't interested in points. He was interested in his learning. So it's not that they can't, it's that they don't. They haven't learned yet.
[28:36]
If we give them protocols, if we give them connective prompts, if we give them orienting rituals so they know where they are in their learning, then they will know where they are in their learning. If we give them a choice, then they will learn how to make choices. So it's not that they are not ready. It's that we haven't taught them in that way.
[28:56] SPEAKER_01:
And what I love about everything in your book is it's something that, you know, these are approaches that the individual teacher could adopt, but approaches that are even more powerful when a whole team or a whole school is approaching them that way, right? That if I'm not the only one teaching those protocols, we're going to be able to get a lot farther because everyone has that common foundation. So the book is Teach for Authentic Engagement. Lauren Porosov, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about your work and instructional design and reach out to you, where's the best place for them to do that online?
[29:29] SPEAKER_00:
Sure. So my website is empowerforwards, with an S, empowerforwards.com. I'm still on Twitter, or X as it's now called, and it's just at Lauren Porosov. And those are probably the two easiest ways to reach out to me.
[29:45] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Lauren, thank you so much for joining me.
[29:47] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
