Season 2, Episode 20: Are you exhausted yet?

Foreign. Hey, Michael, I've got an idea for this week.

All right.

I'm part of a fellowship group, and we begin checking in with each other by each of us sharing three adjectives, describing how we are emotionally entering the conversation. And I thought it might be an interesting way to start today. Are you open to it?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm totally game. And I think mine might be interesting because they are so at odds with each other, I think, Diane, like, as I hear you ask that question, so I'll give it a go. And on the one hand, I would say my first one is I feel excited. You know, there are a lot of neat projects and opportunities that I'm working on or involved in or seeing out there right now that give me a sense of hope for what we could accomplish for everyone from working adults to children to, like, personal growth. On the other hand, I'll confess I feel totally overwhelmed. At the same time, I noted to my wife over the weekend that I just felt like I couldn't prioritize any of the things that were out there. And I just had this sense of paralysis. And I'm not quite feeling that right now. Maybe it was a weekend glitch, but that inability to chase priorities, I think is still out there. And I guess, third, I'd say I feel a lot of uncertainty, Diane. Very uncertain. It's just we've all built deep new rhythms and routines in the pandemic. And, you know, we're asking, what do we want to say? The same. What should be different? As some habits and routines return to what they were pre pandemic, Do I have to throw out other things that I like? And navigating all that right now and thinking through the trade offs and pluses and minuses, it's not. It's not always my strong suit, particularly as all of us, I think, struggle with losing things more than what you have to gain. And so I'm just trying to navigate that right now. What's on your list?

Well, those really resonate a lot with me, and especially that last one. I mean, you and I have even been talking about, do we travel again? And if so, where? So those resonate, you know, my three adjectives, how I'm coming into the space today, Michael, is one exhausted. And that's actually an emotional adjective, not a physical. I just feel like I've been riding a high speed, looping, cresting and falling roller coaster for a year. And I know, I think a lot of people feel that way.

Well, you have.

It's just exhausting. So I feel that sort of emotional exhaustion. My second adjective is fear. And this is not an emotion I have. Often I think people who know me, that's not a way they would. Generally, I don't come from a place of fear, but I've had this low grade persistent fear when it comes to schools and education since the beginning of the pandemic. And quite frankly even personally with my own child and family. And it goes to a little about what you just said, that we're just not gonna see the pandemic as a true reset and we're gonna fail to use this pause on the normal to really redefine normal going forward. And so I have some real fear about that. And then finally my third emotion is guilt. And it's somewhat in contrast to that fear, like you, it's this conflict, these conflicting emotions. It's guilt for not feeling like I can really drive schools and education in general to be doing more for students who've been so impacted by the pandemic. And trust me, it's not that we're not working around the clock and non stop and hard, but it just never seems to be enough. And I have some real guilt about that.

So, oh gosh, it's a lot there. And I suspect you're not alone in those feelings. And I know sometimes I always have this visual of trying to get on top of something and until you can, it's hard to control it. And that certainly describes, right, the last 15 plus months. And so I wonder if it's worth unpacking some of what's underneath all of those feelings and what that might mean for the choices facing all of us right now.

Diane? Michael, I feel confident that I'm not alone. You're not alone. And are these feelings, I think educators across the country are experiencing, experiencing something similar and often these conflicting feelings. And quite frankly, it's exacerbated by a daily barrage of information and advice and expectations that are being communicated. A lot of what we've been talking about all year, not to work, not to mention the actual work and decision making that's happening. So yeah, I think it would be worth, and it's really relevant talking about all of that.

Perfect. Well, there's a lot out there, as we know right now. There's a new report out on remediation versus accelerated learning. There's conversations around what the summer is going to look like. So let's dig into all of this, I think, and see where we land.

Sounds great. Well, let me see if I can kind of get us Started with just a little bit of context setting. You know, as we enter this last week of May, the first group of American schools will begin to wrap up their year. And then over the next five weeks, the remainder of US schools will into the 2020, 2021 school year, sort of officially the same staggering happens again starting in early August and continues through the day after Labor Day, when over that five week period, most of the schools in the US will resume the next school year. And so in between there, most schools will have about an 8 to 10 week summer break, if you will. It is not unusual for educators to feel exhausted at this time of the year. I will just say that that's a pretty normal thing. And honestly, for students and families that feel eager to wrap up, you know, there is this normal rhythm to the calendar year. As much as we have lamented it there, there is a normal rhythm. And that said, this year is not normal. And so my observation of myself and others is that everyone is, is at a point of exhaustion that is different from what it normally feels like. And you know, folks just want it to be over. And for many this is because, you know, they're still virtual and they're just done with being virtual. For others, it's because in person is still under a lot of these COVID protocols. And that just takes it. Yeah, exactly. And that's equally exhausting and whatnot. And, and for everyone there seems to be, you know, a need to kind of process like what have we been through? And, and a wondering about what's going to happen in the fall that just makes it feel like, give me some space. I need, I need something, you know, different. And I, I just need some space. And so, you know, in between there and more than ever, you know, I am literally hearing people say, I just need a break. And usually in schools and among educators, there's a lot of energy around summer. You know, of course many teachers take the summer off, but in my experience, a huge number of teachers and educators use the summit summer to work with students, often in different ways and configurations. And this year I'm just not hearing or seeing much in the way of really good summer plans. And I think for all of the talk and money, lots of money, the summer isn't materializing in, I think, the quote, meaningful ways people had anticipated.

Yeah, it's, that's interesting to hear you say that, Diane, because there were a spate of articles just, just a few weeks ago about all the summer school plans that districts and states were starting to put in place and you know, it does seem like we're hearing a lot less about them now. And that could be evidence of what you're seeing on the ground. I know in our case, I'll speak as a parent for a moment. Our children are signed up for, you know, in some ways a very traditional looking summer. It's the usual wide range of summer camps, you know, the scheduling and logistical challenges that we've talked about before in this podcast or spreadsheets. The spreadsheets are totally there. But I confess that it does feel different from past summers because whereas before that was like this exhaustion of balancing all this, like we're really excited for them to jump into camps, whether it's outdoor baking to time in conservation land or horseback riding, yoga is on the slate. And, you know, I think it's because for the, for us, a big purpose of the summer is to use the outdoor time to allow them to have fun with friends safely and just see how we all do with new routines and for them, hours outside the home, which they haven't had in a long time. So I'll also note that Marguerite Rosa, who of course, was our guest on two episodes ago, she recently did a brief survey looking at what districts and schools were spending that mass massive amount of federal cash that she was talking about. And I was struck by it because there's not a lot that was terribly innovative on the list, and that doesn't mean good or bad, but not innovative. And so, you know, when you looked at what dominated it was things like thank you payments to the staff, a kind gesture to be sure, right? Hiring extra teachers and staff, facilities and projects, planning time and the like, again, nothing bad. But there wasn't stuff like we discussed around adding time to the calendar or allowing schools to choose what they spend the dollars on and things of that nature that maybe would have changed the dynamics a little bit more.

DIANE yeah. You know, one thing I'm noticing, Michael, that might, I think it will interest you, is how the infusion of funds is impacting the summer employment market and same work. Well, we've done some, you know, sort of landscape analysis research as we plan, make our plan, and what we found is that the cost of employing educators this summer has gone way up. It seems that the combination of educators saying, enough, I don't want to work this summer, I'm exhausted and done, combined with this huge infusion of money has really driven up the summer wages for educators. And in the short term, it will be interesting to see if educators can really be attracted to the work this summer, given the lucrative offers, or if the money literally won't matter to them and they just need the break. And perhaps even more interesting will be what this means for the future. And we're always talking about teachers and teacher compensation and teacher salary. And so I'm just really curious where we're going in the future given this infusion of one time money. And I will also say it just really isn't terribly clear to me if the grand vision of extending the school year with innovative summer programs is going to happen. To your note, I think we see evidence that the innovation is probably not there. It seems that money wasn't the only factor in bringing that to life. We've talked often about the lack of time and focus to be able to plan. You know, the same people who are trying to run these schools during this are the people who have to plan. Where is the space coming from? Right. The lack of ideas of what to plan, I mean, despite our best interest efforts, is trying to put every good idea out there, you know, just really not in the water in a lot of ways. And, and now of course, the people who, who want to keep powering through this summer might not, you know, be there in order to bring things to life. So all of that to say, I'm starting to wonder if that is not a terrible thing. And again, I feel guilty for saying this a little bit, like, let's set aside the potential need for child care, which I want to be sensitive to, but as you know, most parents are normally dealing with that anyway. And so, you know, perhaps we need to rethink this summer as a big opportunity. You know, we thought it was going to be this big opportunity to, quote, address learning loss. And instead maybe we need to listen to ourselves and our emotional selves and really focus, I don't know, on a summer of play, dare I say. You know, I think it might be interesting to explore what a summer could look like where we literally as a country stopped obsessing about like getting ahead and the academics and just like played. And I think they're like you said, put kids outside without parents checking in on them every 15 minutes and literally like playing, you know, and how might, you know, maybe that's what we all need right now, given what we've just gone through.

Yeah. You know what strikes me from that, Diane, is how similar I think it is in certain respects to what Secretary Cardona recommended when he talked about summer school a few weeks ago. And you know, I think of stepping back from it because I hear folks in the Ed reform world saying, you know, but look at these size, you know, sizable gaps that have opened up. We need the time and so forth. And I hear certain parents saying that, too, to be sure. And so maybe what I would say is, I think I would encourage schools and districts to come up with a range of choices. And so, you know, I don't want to say that focusing on academics for a child isn't the right step for the summer. It might be in certain cases, I think, predisposed to be with you on this around play. But, you know, for individuals, it. Something different might be right. And so I guess I'm wondering how can schools and districts start to lean into creating a range of choices through which we can actually, you know, I don't know, talk to the students and parents themselves to figure out what would be best for them. And I. Against that backdrop, I have. I have two additional thoughts that just sort of came to me. One is I. I know you all at Summit have traditionally used the summertime extraordinarily well to really accelerate your sort of Horizon 2 and 3 big projects. And so I guess I wonder how schools could take a moment like that. Exhaustion is real, and you need a refresh. But I wonder, like, what does it look like if it's two weeks instead of eight weeks? And leaders make this, you know, stir up some emotion around all that you have accomplished, to reframe it from a deficit perspective to a positive one, to say, look at what we've been through and what we've done, and it's like the final innings of a CrossFit workout. I heard the executive director of Learn launch Jane Swift say the other day to me, and she was like, you know, it's like that last few minutes, you don't think you can do it. And the coach is in you. You can look at what you've done. You can finish this up. I wonder what that would look like, because I'd love to even see this summer start to be to, you know, to what you've recommended that schools do in the fall, which is have conversations with them, to say, what have you learned over the past 18 months, get out of this deficit mindset. Also for the students, you know, what do you feel you need? Let's start assessing them holistically to build a personalized plan, maybe not to deliver it over the summer, but so that we hit the ground running in the fall, and we've just, you know, had a simple conversation with each child, you know, maybe once or twice during the summer. And I think Activities that are inherently play based and motivating and take advantage of the outdoor spaces are critical to have as part of those choice filled lists of things that students could do. Because look, from a learning science perspective, there's a lot of ways that we miss on building background knowledge right now that if we were more thoughtfully using outdoor experiences even just to expose students to the broader world, we, we could actually do a lot more acceleration than I think is popularly understood.

I, you know, we're, we're completely aligned as always. And you know, I'll have a, I'll run a little experiment for you here and report back. I mean this is where we will be at the end of June with all of our leaders across our organization. We're going to do some outside work. We're going to do some, you know, this real, I guess what it would be for adult play, which would be connecting and you know, just personal checking in and journey work and whatnot. And my hope is that refresh people and get them to be able to come back into the space of feeling like they're ready and productive and engaged. And so yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes. And we on our student front have shifted from a normal June sort of summer program timeline to July and really are focused on accelerating into the year as opposed to obsessing about the loss of this, this past year. And so you know, that leads to this report that we've both been reading. And so I love your take on.

Yeah, so like breaking news, right? It's to an extent. It was in a bunch of the digests that we both read this morning, which is this new report from TNTP and Zern, which is a high quality math curriculum provider. They're out with this new report that suggests that focusing on closing students gaps this fall might not be the best way to serve them. And in essence what they did is they analyzed 2 million students trajectories and found that when Zern's math software was used to accelerate learning, and let me just define that because they're talking about a strategy in which students still do grade level work and merely backfill critical information when they're missing it on an as needed basis. So basically in the context of the grade level work that they're doing, they saw dramatic growth according to their essay. So they said students completed over 25% more grade level work than they would have using remediation and you know, the remediation path. By contrast, they basically worked on material that they had not yet mastered. And according to the report, they continued to struggle. Now, one caveat is that it was not a randomized control trial, meaning teachers got to choose which path to take with the students. So, Diane, I had a lot of thoughts reading this this morning, but one was that that, you know, we ought to address the topic head on because our most recent episode had Joel Rose of New Classrooms on it. And he seemed to suggest a strategy that is quite different from either of these options, I would argue. And that said someone reading the report and listening to Joel talk on our episode, I think he would, you know, someone listening that would say, well, his solution sounds a lot like remediation. And that implies some level of tracking, in my opinion, which isn't a fair way to judge what New Classrooms does. But I just thought we ought to unpack it. What are your thoughts?

I'm so glad we are addressing this, Michael. And it's such a good example of there's always important nuance and sometimes when you're reading a high level media report, you don't get into that nuance. I would not say sometimes, I would say most times. And so here's how I would unpack this. Joel's solution is personalized. I believe Zern's solution is also personalized. So we're dealing with personalized learning here in both cases, which is to say that, you know, students are working on math that enables them to be successful and, you know, it's the right fit math for them in that moment. Both of those programs have someone beyond just the teacher who's making, you know, decisions and offering up, you know, what the student will work on next. And in those cases, success begets success. And we've seen something similar to this in the Khan Academy world as well. And so I'm not sure that there's that much difference in the student experience here among those three different programs. But there's fundamentally a different experience when it's a teacher who's in a classroom, who's teaching a straight up grade level curriculum, who probably isn't able to personalize in the way we're talking about. I also think a key point Joel is making is that the high stakes grade level assessments at the end of the year drive those adults behaviors. And so when teachers are deciding the curriculum and concepts their students will access, most often they're not doing it in a sophisticated, personalized way. You know, they're driven by the accountability they have to those tests and therefore only offer the grade level material, often without meaningful strategies to fill gaps and holes in the student's prior knowledge that prevent the students from being successful in that moment. And so I think that nuance is really critically important here, and I hope it doesn't get lost.

Yeah, I think it's a really important point. I just add a few others to it, and I'm curious how they land. One is if I read the study correctly, they're using grade level assessments to measure the results. And if you haven't taught grade level material, I'm not sure what people are expecting to see on a test, but, like, you're not going to do well. So I'm not sure it's a fair question that they're asking. And so the second one was, you know, Joel's methodology specifically only works if we're able to take a longer view of academic growth and progress over time. Right. And decouple what you're working on from an assumption of what you're supposed to be working on based on your age. And, you know, he, he does this well because he doesn't say, oh, and it doesn't matter where you get to. Ultimately, he says, look, the trajectory has to be toward mastering key math competencies by graduation. But he is willing to say it might take two years instead of one. And we're not going to label you in the course of that. And, you know, the third thing I guess is I would say I do think there's some wisdom, though, to the fundamental point that's coming out of this, which is, you know, certainly you can introduce concepts in the context of more interesting ones to make progress. That's a great instructional strategy. But I think what gets lost in the headline is what we really need, and you said, is we need to create personalized pathways here. And for some students, absolutely, you know, start them on that grade level material, backfill other students. Frankly, Diane, that approach might not work because they, you know, it might frustrate them. They may be so far behind conceptually that you're going to lose them and confuse them up front. And there I would say you need to follow the student and stop the one size fits all assumptions. And then I had a pet peeve also with the research, which is it only tells you what happens on average. And I would love, like, this is where the real learnings and research to me, are in the anomalies, like those students who had a response different from the average, which is to say, who are the students for whom, you know, they didn't accelerate when you were doing the grade level material? What was different about them? I'm guessing it's going to point in the direction that I just said that, you know, they were so far behind that it just developed misconceptions. I could be wrong, but that's a question. And then the second one would be, I'd love to know for whom those students actually accelerated when they were getting the material that they actually, you know, right sized for them. I guess I'm not sure this study could pick that up though because you're using a grade level test. And then I guess the last point is I do think math is also likely to be different from other subjects where the concepts. And you would know more about this than I would. Concepts build from one another to the next in very interdependent ways often. Whereas, you know, social studies or science, you may be able to jump around a little bit more and they're, you know, moving, quote unquote, backwards may be less important. Although I'll put a huge caveat if it's reading and we're talking K through 2. Don't skip the basics.

No, we're, we're in violent agreement about that one. And this is such an important point point. The other subjects, and I would argue argue more precisely the, the skills in those subjects. Forget the subjects for a moment that what we're trying to learn across those subjects are absolutely different from math. And we really do everyone a disservice when we fail to acknowledge that reality and create approaches and learning experiences that don't differentiate math from other more skills based subjects. Not to say that the content isn't important there, but we're. It is a fundamentally different learning approach and process in these other subject areas and we really need to distinguish between the two. Oh my gosh, Michael. This conversation brings me back to our first season where we really paid a lot of respect to the science of learning. Not that we haven't this, this season, but I think it's, think it's worth flagging that here again and reminding ourselves that, you know, anytime we're designing, we need to incorporate the science in our designs. We, we actually know quite a bit about how people learn and unfortunately a lot of that just gets overlooked or pushed to the side. And you know, we, we could talk for hours on why that is but you know, we, we have to be holding ourselves accountable to that if we're going to get to innovative solutions, as you said, that are really going to make a difference for kids.

Yeah, it's a good place to leave the conversation for now. I think we've touched on a bunch of topics that are lighting both of us on fire and wanting to dig deeper. But we'll hold ourselves back and shift to our final segment of every show when we get to reflect a little bit about what we're reading and watching. And I've got a bunch. Diane, I confess I was super into inspired over the weekend by Phil Mickelson's PGA victory on Sunday. But, but also former Olympic medalist gymnast Chelsea Memel, who's a mom of two coming out of a nine year retirement to compete and showing that our assumptions around age and the like may just be that assumptions. And you know, we could tie that into grade level fallacies, I'm sure. But, but I actually want to raise another topic. Yeah, go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say. Or just personally relish in the fact that the old people had a good.

We're still, we're still, we're still there. We still there. Right. But, but I want to raise another topic that, that relates to math, actually, which, and I'll go to history as usual on this. I was geeking out on another history book. This was Ike by Evan Thomas. And it's, it's, it's an interesting book. In general, it's more about his foreign policy than domestic. But one of the places where it crosses over is in this conversation of when the Russians launched Sputnik into space and the impact that I think Evan Thomas does a really good job of describing how that affected America's schools. And it was interesting because the Eisenhower administration was sort of took a very this is less important than you all think it is approach to it, which I didn't realize, but obviously the country did not. And it really raised everyone in a furor of what are we doing and why are we not learning physics and calculus and things like that. And we now treat those sort of as the only math tracks that matter in schools. And we've neglected the pathways of statistics and the like. And I, you know, you think about how much that was made for a moment, Diane, in history and how much are we missing now because we went down that path inflexibly.

There's so much to discuss in there. And it's interesting. I don't think we've ever touched on this before, but I will share with you that if I could teach only one course in high school, if kids only got one course, what would it be? I would teach statistics.

Oh, we should definitely come back.

We should come back to that. In terms of my playlist, I went much lighter in some ways this weekend. My playlist was the Marvel Universe, so some might be surprised by that. But my son is home from his first, first year of college, which is pure joy. And this is a thing we do together. We watch Marvel. And so this weekend we watched the Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And, you know, in. In addition to being, you know, fun and joyful, Michael, it really reminded me of how courageous comics have always been, quite frankly, in tackling the issues of the day head on, you know, going right at them. And this series is no exception. I was really. Yeah, the. The conversations in that series are. Are the ones we're having around the world right now, the important ones. And so it was. It was good to see them as part of that.

That's awesome. I mean, art reflects and defines our reality. Right. And so that they can drive those conversations. So that. Something I'll have to add to my weekend list now as well. But until then, thank you all for joining us on Class Disrupted. We'll see you next time.