Miriam Plotinsky on How To Empower Student Agency

You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I’m Shani Carruthers and today I’m joined by author and instructional specialist Miriam Plotinski to discuss her new book, Teach More, Hoverless. Miriam, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I’m doing great. How are you? I’m doing well. I’m going to start by what you just commonly or just lovingly refer to as like your day job, your instructional specialist job. What is an instructional specialist? What do you

do? What do you love about it? And what are some good I have moments you’ve had? Being an instructional specialist, I never even knew that this job existed, I think, for most of my career because I spent most of my career in the classroom. And then I started to hear about people who would go into schools and support teachers. And you know, you can support them with professional development or with planning instruction or with looking at curriculum or it’s all the different colors of

the rainbow of what we could be doing in a school. And so I’ve been doing that in some capacity for five years. And for the first couple years, I did it in pre-K to 12. And my background’s completely secondary. So I learned a lot about elementary math, namely that I need a refresher in elementary math. But essentially, I learned that elementary teachers are just rock stars, which I think I knew already. But I was just amazed at what I learned about teaching from seeing the earlier

grades and preschool. I can’t even I can’t even talk about that because it’s a whole other level. And then I after a couple years of doing that, I transitioned back into secondary grade six to 12 and into my content area, which is secondary English language arts and literacy. So I do a lot with curriculum and instruction. I work on book approvals. I do some things with examining texts and how they’re used and why they’re used. We’re living in very controversial times. I have

written about book banning. I feel very strongly about that. I think those teachers do. So an instructional specialist is just someone who is if you’re working for a district or in-house consultant, essentially, and you spend your day working with different schools. So I support all secondary schools in a I think for the 14th largest district in the country. Oh, wow. It’s a busy day job. For sure. And guys, my mind is still in that space of when you’re

saying that you had to do K through 12. And but you’re like mostly secondary as you know, as far as your experience and what a wake up call that was, but how it just truly helped you to have an even greater appreciation for the teachers at the lower levels as well. I think a greater appreciation for anything I could ever do. I mean, there are so many balls in the air and also just the kinds of challenges that elementary teachers encounter that we don’t see as

much with older kids. I mean, even like I would walk down a hallway and I remember a child is holding out like a bloody Kleenex. He like helped me. I must say that totally threw me, but it was different than what I was used to. Right. Absolutely. All the props in the world. Yeah. And I want to go back for a second because you mentioned book banning and how you feel very strongly about that. Let’s talk about that for just a second. We are living in the chaotic times

of what kids should or should not be exposed to. Talk a little bit more about what are your feelings around book banning and what are some things that you’ve personally been able to do to kind of educate others about this particular topic. Well, I think that especially if you’ve been teaching English for your entire career, you probably feel probably I’m not going to make assumptions across the board, but you probably feel like the children should be reading the books.

I mean, that’s the first assumption that I make about educators in general. So I wrote, I think it was back this, I think it was February, I wrote an op-ed for Education Week about the banning of the book Mouse, MA US in Tennessee. And that’s a graphic novel about the Holocaust. And it had been banned because they said it was too graphic and too disturbing. And actually that treatment of the Holocaust is pretty, compared to other books. I mean, the author or the artist, Art Spiegelman,

uses animals instead of people to represent different characters. And it’s more the ideas that are very controversial to some. They should not be controversial, but they are. And I read the whole transcript of the Tennessee School District and how they thought this was such a damaging book. And this was around the time as well, but all these other books started getting banned at the same time. And if you look at the downfall of any society in terms of, let’s say democracy, for example,

one of the first things to go are the books, the books. So I think that it’s impossible to not feel strongly about it, especially because, for example, I was reading the other day that teachers in Florida are starting to worry about what they can and cannot say in front of children and the books they are teaching. Like one teacher, there was an article in the Washington Post and she said, she’s teaching about Sally Ride, the astronaut. But she can’t talk about Sally Ride’s personal life

because Sally Ride is gay, or she was. I don’t know if she’s still alive. I should know this, but I don’t. And so she couldn’t think about, she couldn’t know for sure whether she would get in trouble for teaching this book about this great astronaut, this groundbreaking astronaut. And I’m in a district where right now what I’m doing is I’m working to get approval for books that have representation for LGBTQIA+. This is like a huge project. We want to see more representation. Our students aren’t

seeing it. And so I’m in a part of the country where this is happening and this is considered to be a positive. I think in general, when we talk about book banning, I think that’s really frustrating for teachers is that the people who are banning books are not the people who understand why they’re being used. We select books because they support standards and skills that kids need to access at very specific points in their academic career. And so you look at quantifiable measures like

lexile levels, you know, how technically complex is this book. But that doesn’t tell you everything. You also look at qualitative measures, you know, for anything from content to how the ideas mesh with certain other elements of the story as compared to the complexity of the ideas because you might have something that’s really simply written, but the ideas are way up there. So teachers are trained to look at these elements of books and how they’re selected and to make

connections. Oh, a ninth grader might not be able to access it for this reason, but an 11th grader can. And this is part of what I do. When you look at why people ban books outside of education, that’s because they’re scared of the ideas or the content and they’re not thinking about anything else. And they’re also trying to sometimes protect kids, but I also think it’s just trying to prevent access to certain ideas. So I could go on about this for whatever time we have,

but that’s a quick summary of why I feel so strongly because, A, we shouldn’t be taking books out of hands if educators who are trained to say they are there for an actual reason, an instructional reason are saying that they are there legitimately. And also just because it’s a sign that we’re all, things are getting very bad. Yeah. And I’ll just ask you one more question before we move on. But in the beginning, you said kids should read the books. Why should kids read

the books? Because that’s how they learn. I really get so upset when people talk about ideas being controversial. And I wonder, since when did we decide that we should only look at things that we agree with? And when did we decide that everything has to be without friction? Learning involves friction. It means you encounter challenging ideas. Right. I thought that might be a little bit outside of what you have experienced before. And the whole idea is that you have skilled

adults who are with you to help you. And the same people who are banning books and taking actual literacy away from kids are okay with them on TikTok. I’m not real sure why that’s legit. Yeah. You’re not looking at everything they’re looking at. You’re focusing on one medium. And this is the medium that can educate them. And education is power. And maybe that’s the point. Yeah. No. And when you’re talking about that friction, what friction becomes student agency

and their ability to advocate for themselves when they know who they are, when they know where they belong and that they’re wanted. And so bringing it back to your book about teaching more and hovering less. And this is all a part of it, right? That friction, that tension and allowing students to exist in the classroom that is created by them. And the teachers kind of happens to be in the room. But thinking about how teachers can step back, how can teachers step back? How can they

stop micromanaging? How can they get to the student agency that you were just talking about? Well, and there is a lot of uncertainty around the idea of not micromanaging because there’s these false parallels that people create that control equals instruction. That the more we do, the more kids are learning. And these are all false parallels or dichotomies that we create as teachers. So when I wrote the book, I wrote it as a four step process to how you can begin, if you

are interested, if you’re not interested, if you think micromanagement is great, then don’t read the book. But if you feel like you’re working too hard, and like you’re coming home every night exhausted with your voice half gone, then you might be interested in uncovering some of that. So the stage is to first of all, examine your beliefs around education and your mindset to determine just exactly how much you might be micromanaging. The second phase is to reframe how we relate to

kids and to give them more academic identity in the classroom as learners to really give them that credibility that I think we often do not by accident. You don’t mean to, it just happens. The third stage is about how we plan for student engagement and we do that by involving them in the process. And the fourth stage is then when we go into instruction, how can we provide choice? And that doesn’t mean that every single day kids are doing whatever they feel like doing. Again, that’s a

misconception of this kind of method. It’s when and where can we give them more opportunities to make choices because they are humans. We probably are doing that from time to time. Usually when you reference the mindset piece starting with just kind of the very first step, and usually when people think about mindset, they think about fixed mindset versus growth mindset, but don’t really understand what that means or don’t really sometimes understand the strategies

involved to begin to to move from a fixed to a growth and how that translates back to the classroom. What are some of the strategies or just strategies or tips that can be utilized in order to kind of start to unlock those mindsets so that we can get to the classroom that you’re describing? I love that you brought in fixed and growth because one thing, and I teach a class about this, we talk about is how the power of effort really has everything to do with whether or not, you know,

how do we attribute our success if I don’t do well on something and my blaming some sort of external force like the test was too hard or you know, or am I am I saying there’s something that I had that I didn’t do or that I maybe could do better next time and that that’s sort of the difference between a growth mindset versus a fixed. And then when we think about our mindsets about ourselves, what do we really believe about what students can learn? When I walk into a classroom,

do I actually believe that every child in front of me has the capacity to guide his or her own process or do I believe that they can’t do it without me so that if I step out of the room or if I’m sick, this is why you see so many teachers by the way in school when they’re sick because they’re so afraid that if they leave nothing will happen and it’s possible that’s the case, especially if the class has not been set up in such a way that kids know what to do when a teacher

is gone. So what that first chapter does is I have some activities that people can do either individually or in teams. First of all, you have a little fun activity called I might be a micro manager if I also like a cosmopolitan style quiz you can take to see exactly how much of a micromanager you are because I just thought those were fun growing up like I’ll take a quiz. Look, I’m glad but I see the answers. Exactly. And then looking at these mindset myths and

trying to flip them and the idea is awareness for that first stage, right? Let’s have some awareness. So if I say that I believe in student learning but then I’m hovering over them and I have illustrations that I’ve uncovered in this chapter with the tools. How do I address these contradictions between belief and action in my practice? How do I start to peel away at that? What’s one thing I can do to change that? And that’s the purpose of mindset because that’s the

hardest thing in the world to fix. I remember when I used to do a lot of interviewing and hiring when I was leading up a department and the one thing I would look for to be in place, if possible, would be the mindset of that belief in students because that was one thing. You can build teacher capacity in any number of ways but if that’s not there then that’s a little harder. That’s a little harder to manage. Yeah. This is about us wanting to be self-reflective and no

teacher who wants to be successful ever says I’m done, I got it, I don’t need to think about what I do and I don’t think teachers do that by the way. They’re made mostly an incredibly self-reflective group. Yeah, when you were saying I believe our children can learn but if the actions aren’t really matching the words then right we’re out of alignment and you were talking about the hovering that helicopter teaching. I want to talk a little bit more about that because I was actually

just talking to someone the other day about helicopter parenting and what that looks like and I know when we discuss helicopter teaching it’s not much different because you said that some teachers really believe that teaching only happens in their presence. If I’m not there, it’s kids aren’t going to learn, it’s going to be a waste of day but when does most learning happen? If teachers really believe that this only happens in my presence but when does most learning happen

and then how do we begin to know that it happened if we’re not just like right on top of the student? When does most learning happen? That’s an interesting question. I think it doesn’t happen when we think it does so which is a frustrating answer but it’s not when we’re standing there staring at it. I mean it’s not as though if I’m trying to teach kids how to structure an essay and I’m doing the whole sentence frames and starters and I’m being very

hands-on with it. It’s not like most kids in that moment are going to go oh that’s not how it works. It’s later on. Things have to marinate. We have to process and I think a lot of the time if we give kids more time to process that’s when the learning happens. For example, if I ask kids a question and I actually give them five seconds of wait time, I actually count to five and most teachers don’t count to five. They count to 0.5 unconsciously and jump right in but if I give them time to process

they’ll give me a thoughtful answer and then once they speak if I wait five more seconds which is wait time two they might build on it or elaborate on it or another student might jump in. So learning happens when we stop talking just a little bit you know and we allow for that processing time because there’s only so much the brain can take and helicopter teaching doesn’t allow for any of that. So if I’ve been talking for you know 10 straight minutes and I don’t let kids have

two minutes to process in some way that learning won’t happen. So that’s sort of a roundabout way of saying learning happens when we step back a little bit and let kids think about how to do it and remind me of your second question. Oh no that’s okay how do we know that it happened if we’re not doing the hovering that you’re speaking of? Well there’s this awesome thing that we call formative assessment a lot of people misunderstand but it doesn’t have to be a big deal where every

day we are seeing what kids know and we can do that in a variety of ways just asking a question and then looking at the answer and what it uncovers. Another thing I really like doing is asking kids what they learned. It’s amazing how often we don’t ask them that question and we try to guess. Like oh you know I wonder I wonder how they felt about the reading today. I wonder what if we just said how did you feel about the reading today and then we would actually

look at their responses and think about it when we plan instruction. I think a lot of teachers do do this by the way and they’re awesome and then you go back the next day and you say here’s what we’re going to do today based on what you told me. So that’s how we know. We have to really ask a lot of questions listen to the responses. It’s really a lot of listening more than talking and also following through on what what they tell us. So the quieter we get the more we can hear and the

greater the buy-in for students and so when we talk about that student buy-in when we talk about removing the teacher as the sage on the stage this is often a pipe dream because we have these conversations everybody knows that this is the way it should be but then in reality that doesn’t always happen because sometimes we fall back into our kind of traditional styles of teaching but in this pipe dream the class kind of runs itself. What is the mindset need to be of the

teachers and the students in order to get to that pipe dream? The mindset has to be that we are normalizing and not just normalizing but celebrating mistakes. Part of teaching we all know we’re gonna fail pretty often we’re gonna fall down and that doesn’t mean you throw away the whole thing that you wanted to do forever you just rethink it and and we do that constantly. Kids need to know that too. One of my favorite things to do is to look at what answers kids are giving me that I never

predicted because they reveal their thinking in ways you know and if if traditionally we look at at an answer that’s way out in left field and we go yeah no that’s not it let’s go back to where I was trying to say which is what most of us do we’re gonna miss an opportunity to figure out how that kid’s brain was working and why they came up with that to begin with. So a big piece of having this classroom is to let those mistakes happen and when it happened to be like yes what did we learn

and also to be very open about it I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to kids boy did that did that just crash and burn so sorry we’ll try again tomorrow and being that way about myself you know as a teacher it’s important to do certain things when you don’t know to say I don’t know I will find out or can you help me or who might know because part of you were talking about growth mindset part of growth mindset is being resourceful knowing who to ask we’re not the ultimate authority

but we know how to get the answers when we need to and then another thing is being very open about yeah I uh didn’t do so well with that did I now and then letting them see that about you and that you’re like okay well we tried how’s everyone doing we’re still here nothing bad happened okay so that that’s part of of achieving the dream and then the other part of achieving the dream is is understanding that you can’t have it all the time there there are gonna be days you

got to do your whole group what not your traditional what people like to call the stage on the stage there’s a place that’s not like it’s not like you can never do that right you have to do it all the time no you know you know and can you teach kids to do certain things like I used to have at the beginning of every quarter or whatever a practice day where we would practice putting the room into different configurations it sounds like a ridiculous way to spend 45 minutes but by the end of the 45

minutes they know how to make smaller groups they know how to make big groups they know how to make circles they know how to make whatever and also is really great in today’s day and age where most teachers are floating in and out of classroom spaces so you can teach kids okay when we come to this room go into this configuration they go and then on different learning days depending on what you need they can move yeah and you only do that for one day I love the notion of just the importance

of transparency and vulnerability as the adult which then gives permission for the students and then when you’re talking about sometimes you just crash and burn and students give the wrong answer and you speak about this a little in your reframing relationship section which is around the second step when the student gave the quote unquote wrong answer between the lion and the mouse and talking about parasites but the way that the teacher was able to reframe that question in order to

preserve the relationship was really important so when that happens and sometimes it doesn’t always go that way sometimes relationships are unintentionally harmed when a student gives that kind of answer but it’s not validated instead they’re kind of made to felt like shame how do you fix that how how do you fix those kind of relationships that you’ve been working so hard to create but then can just go away in just a snap because of an unintentional word or phrase etc.

To be honest this is what I live in terror of as a teacher and not just with kids I teach adults as well and we accidentally offend people on a regular basis you know we don’t know the impression that we have on them we think we had a casual exchange or that something was fine and somebody goes home and their feelings are hurt and the example I give in the book is is a girl who doesn’t want to speak up very often but she thinks she knows an answer and the teacher in the first scenario I believe

moves on when she doesn’t quite give the right answer oh okay you know and and we did this a lot you know kids said something not what you’re thinking okay any other thoughts and the second you do that the kid gets the message of all right well I messed up and children are sensitive adults are too but but it’s harder when you’re a kid and you put yourself out there and you’re not willing to do it again so if you’re aware that’s happened because very often we’re not aware so you can’t really be held

responsible for the stuff you don’t notice but if you are aware that’s happened then you have to try to do better the next day so finding what I would do is I would find something specific about something that the kid did in the middle of class and I would just highlight and say wow the idea that you just shared is so important because here’s what it does and the more specific you can get with your praise not and again not you’re a cool person I like you that’s not going to get you anywhere right

you have to validate their ideas and and make them feel like they’re a legitimate part of the class and once you’ve done that you’ll get them back you’ll get them back yeah and once you validate those ideas you’re creating a space where they feel safe to share they’re safe to show up speak up etc but how are strong relationships and safe spaces connected where how do those two things kind of merge so kids who don’t feel safe don’t trust you and when they don’t trust you they won’t they won’t

work for you or with you it’s it’s really that simple I mean I wouldn’t want to I I think that in the past if I think about my history with teachers who had my trust versus those who didn’t I just really needed to feel as though they believed in me like they felt like I had a brain and a contribution that was that was worthwhile and we don’t trust people who don’t validate our intelligence in school that’s what school is is partly there for it’s there for other reasons too but especially when

we’re in an academic environment if the teacher is just saying oh a nice outfit or ignoring you completely or being kind of an innocuous force in your life you don’t trust them they don’t have to be actively rude or unpleasant for a child to get the impression that it’s just not working out so that that trust is really important with specifically you as a learner you as a scholar and this is something that I’m working on um first of all my next writing my next right

for my next writing trick um I really want to explore how we build student identity I also I’ve been thinking a lot about the quiet kids I’ve been thinking about them so much because I know this because I have one quiet kids are not quiet first of all they’re only quiet when they’re uncomfortable and for the most part and they also get really offended by that label yeah and so when we think oh you know just a really quiet kid there’s something we’re missing a lot of

the time about that child and how we have an access to something something that they need so let’s talk for a second about that kid who’s choosing maybe to not be heard and who’s choosing to not share the details of their lives but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to be seen and I know that you do struggle with that um confusion about validating kids based on their willingness to share the details instead of truly just creating a space where

learners fill value no matter like what kind of introvert extrovert you are how do you um help people to understand that it’s not about the details but it is about feeling value how do you how do you create that understanding for other educators a lot of the time it’s really on breaking it down into some very technical pieces so for example I talk a lot about the difference among and I learned about this in in a book that escapes me but we we think of feedback

as a lot of different things like for example grading and making suggestions or providing guidance what I’ve learned over the years that feedback guidance and evaluation are three different things so when I give students feedback I’m supposed to be giving them objective value free information about their performance in relation to a product so for example the very classic example I like to point out is if the speed limit is 25 and you’re going 30 you’re exceeding the standard

that has been set it’s just it’s just an observation there’s no value and when you grade students in that way when you provide that feedback you were supposed to give me a five sentence paragraph I only see three we need two more sentences the focus is on the product not on the child whereas a grade is some sort of evaluation and judgment and sometimes even a suggestion is is you know I would spend more time on this you clearly have not spent more time that you need to and then kids get

then it starts to get a really tricky so when you know how do you build that how do you start doing that one way is to focus on what you’re trying to achieve and then to say okay well here’s the here’s the situation I needed five sentences I got three what can we do together because I know you have two more sentences in you and here’s some let’s make here your ideas and then I’ll share some ideas and we’ll work together and that’s when you start building the relationship

around around the work let’s use that example though for a second when the the teacher has a requirement of a five census paragraph and the student is some mystery is that an opportunity for a student to say well actually this isn’t the best way for me to show you that I learned this you know just having these five sentences how can a teacher use that as a relationship building moment in order to have students kind of co-author their learning whenever a student

comes at me with a different option for what I’ve asked for you know and very often it’s not necessarily the three cents so might be can I draw this instead right or can I or this is the classic one can I bullet point my ideas it all depends on what I’m looking for and why so the first thing I’ll say is first of all show me how show me your thinking why do you why do you want to do it this way and not the way I’m asking so first of all listen to what they’re saying

because if it’s just I want to work less that’s not legitimate but if they can actually explain why it’s not working for them your way and why it’s working for them their way at least give them that audience because they deserve that now having said that sometimes we can be flexible and we can say okay draw the thing do the bullet points just I’m looking for clarity of ideas today so however your ideas are clear fantastic but if your learning goal that day is to write a full paragraph

because you are trying to teach kids how to elaborate on ideas and develop them further and add detail what you can say is I respect what you were saying and what you’re telling me and I’m glad you trust me enough to tell me that however here’s what I’m trying to accomplish with you and here’s why here’s the end goal and so you make it a dialogue yeah and then you constantly say because I believe in this your success is important to me so how are we going to ensure that you’re

successful in meeting this learning outcome that we have for today yeah and I think that’s one of the great things about your book because you use different anecdotes like that about different students and different situations that are very familiar to to any teacher and then you sometimes take that same student and show them how it might change if they if this were to pivot and in your chapter three when you talk about that engagement and that investment it’s exactly what you were just talking

about about that buy-in and how sometimes you can be flexible and just kind of what are the benefits of that because you you reference a student that was kind of checked out but then when the teacher was able to discover oh well hey he likes cars and so this is kind of a way that we can increase the engagement in order to have a greater impact for the students who really invest in their learning but it really takes the teacher doing a lot of planning on the front end to really make sure

that that engagement happens to kind of create some different segments for what that could look like so how does teacher planning impact how engaged and invested students are in their work so it’s interesting that when we think about planning we are probably doing a lot more than we realize it’s just that we’re doing it on the back end it’s not on the front end right so for example when we’re planning a more student centered classroom what we’re really planning

for is some flexibility you know what happens if I plan a and it goes to be how do I go ahead and meet the same goal making sure that I also give kids an opportunity to express their ideas in a variety of ways so a couple things I’ll say first of all most of us I hope are not working alone we’re working in teaching teams and if you are working alone then that’s that’s a little bit harder but the idea is you’re finding ways to collaborate on lessons and maximize one of the skills so that

you’re not reinventing wheels constantly another idea that I really find so appealing and I talk about it all the time is Katlyn Tucker she’s a blended learning expert she talks about turning your agenda sideways and all that means is you take everything that you were going to do anyway and everything on the agenda becomes a station or a point in the room and it’s a very on the surface of a simple idea but then you think about you’re like whoa I’m not doing I’m not I’m doing the same

stuff I’m just doing it differently and then the other thing is the power of good first instruction so by hearing students more along the way and by getting more feedback so if I have the flexibility as a teacher because I have on a particular day some students are working on a project some students are writing some students are reading and I the teacher I’m either circulating or I’m conferencing I see more student work and I hear more students along the way so that when

I’m grading their stuff it’s not the same surprise it would have been I’ll have a better sense as we’re working where they stand and where they are and whether they’re getting it and there’s less of a chance I’m going to have to go back and reteach because reteaching is a lot of work on the back end when you are a week or two out from the unit and then you go oops they didn’t they didn’t get that I got to go back so a lot of it’s about planning for really strong first instruction that

tells you how kids are doing and really focusing on the feedback and focusing on the formative pieces and giving yourself the time and space to look at what they’re doing in the classroom so that you’re doing less later on right so just about where you’re putting it it’s not it’s not more total it’s just in a different place yeah if that makes sense no it makes total sense in a place that allows for greater engagement and investment we’ve been talking a lot about

teachers but I know the the points that you’re making here in these different stages around the mindset and the reframing of relationships engagement to investment and choice-based instruction it’s also very true for the ad leaders who are in the building how do these strategies also ring true for them and how they lead for others so we’re talking about administrators instructional leaders you know I’ve always thought we should practice as we preach and sometimes we

go we go to meetings and it’s they call it death by powerpoint right where you know you’re sitting there in front of a slideshow for an hour and it’s a slideshow everybody could have read on their own the whole thing could have been an email so if we’re talking about engaging students we should probably try some of those same techniques when we are leading and so if a school has a professional development focus of student-centered anything make the meetings like that let teachers move in

notifications they can access some differentiated methods they can look at different resources they can make some choices then you’re showing that you understand this approach from a much more practical and hands-on perspective I also think that if you don’t feel like you as a leader might have this capacity yet work with a teacher who’s really strong with it because in my experience when teachers lead meetings and when teachers lead a lot of the instructional push of a school

then you have a lot more buy-in and people want to listen because your colleagues they’re doing it every day they have experience and in fact my second book which is coming out next year it’s called lead like a teacher and it’s all about how to run your school from this teaching perspective you know sometimes that might mean planning a lesson with a teacher or asking a teacher if you can have their class for a day while they go observe others or all sorts of options that you have for

being because once you go into administration a lot of the time having that connection to instruction I mean there’s like a million fires right it’s such it’s such an intense job yeah they’re in triage constantly so of course what happens is that the observations start falling by the wayside and and all those pieces that they probably want to do more than anything else right yeah no I love your your new book that you referenced leading lead like a teacher

and it reminds and having the administrator kind of ask for support from the other instructional leaders in the school I think does a really good job of reminding the administrators that they are the principal teacher in that building because like you said there are other fires that they’re constantly having to put out but ultimately they are just the highest teacher in that building and should be continuing those practices when they can because we understand that obviously

things aren’t easy yeah and I wrote an article about it I think for um it was for agitopia a couple years ago it was pre-pandemic but it was why administrators could benefit from remaining in the classroom in some capacity and I talked to some really cool principals who found ways to teach every day how did you do that very inspirational but I feel that way for for all of us I feel that way for me too I I’ve been in a non-classroom position now for five years I still teach in fact

I am teaching all day tomorrow because that’s how it stays real and in zoom I thought it was really important when we were in zoomland to teach in zoomland so that I understood what teachers were facing when I talked to them and that doesn’t mean by the way I understood because I was working with adult learners a lot of the time although I was also working with kids but just having that empathy and in in in my upcoming book I call the the separation that occurs I called an empathy gap

sometimes we just don’t so how do we how do we close that up a little bit more yeah well I really enjoyed this conversation but I don’t want to let you go without asking about the other important piece in your life because before we got on you mentioned that you were a music major so I do have a long time to go a long time ago but that’s okay I don’t remember anything I was young and happy it’s it’s an easy question I promise but I want to know what song or artist should our

listeners turn on today oh wow oh I wish I’d been prepared to see but I know it’s really not no that’s not an easy question at all that’s really hard um oh man I’m like wishing I could like cheat I want to be like students I want to open up my phone and look at my pandora okay I’ll tell you who I was listening to this is my editing music okay because I write a lot um obviously and her name is she’s a film film soundtrack person her name is Rachel Portman okay she did a lot of movie

soundtracks especially circa 90s and oos I love her she did shoko law I don’t know if you’re familiar with shoko law not the great movie about chocolate okay and it’s a great soundtrack Rachel Portman she’s fantastic in this great background music to think they’re think too and write too that is your recommend very very green like it doesn’t matter who’s screaming in the background or what’s going on you’re gonna get your zen on you’re gonna feel good well that sounds perfect we all need a little

dose of more of that kind of balance so Miriam thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast and teaching us a little bit more about um micromanagement and giving students more agency bandbooks music all the things it’s been a pleasure talking to you well I think it has been such a pleasure being here I really appreciate the opportunity to come and and talk to you about all the things absolutely thank you thanks for tuning in to the Getting Smart podcast today we want this podcast

to be actionable and insightful and a great way to learn about what’s next in learning in order to stay on the cutting edge we need people in the field to tell us what they’re hearing what they’re wanting and what they’re needing to learn more about got a topic or a guest in mind send your recommendations to me mason at gettingsmart.com and if you like what you’re hearing don’t forget to leave a review in Apple podcasts or subscribe wherever you listen