Rebecca Wolfe and Ryan MacDonald on Educator Competencies

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You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I’m Rebecca Middles and today we’re joined by Rebecca Wolf, Vice President of Impact and Improvement at KnowledgeWorks, and Ryan McDonald, Senior Program Associate on the Students that Are Learning Team at the Council of Chief State School Officers. Rebecca, Ryan, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. How did you two meet? I don’t know when the exact moment was. I think it was, it would have been the fall of 2015 when the actual, the original educator competencies that we had at CCSSO and that and JFF had worked on together. And they had just been released and we were, I think, planning for a big convening to bring stakeholders in together to kind of really launch and get the competencies out there. And we worked with, I was part of the job was kind of working and doing all the logistics for that when I first started at the council.

And then we had a big source form and almost no one could come, but we were definitely bonded through that initial kind of launch of the competencies back then. And it was a fun way to start a new job at CCSSO. It gave Ryan and I a lot of time to get to know each other since almost nobody could make it to the meeting. But one of the sort of fun parts of why our organizations came together is we have been working at students at the center, which is the initiative I originally help found at Job So The Future and now moved over to KnowledgeWorks, my current home, is we were very focused on the research.

So what does it mean to do good teaching and learning? How do students learn? What motivates them? What engages them? And how do we help educators understand that research and policymakers use it?

Ryan’s organization was focused on the states. So it was kind of this perfect melding of we were hearing from educators. We love this learner centered stuff. It’s great. We believe the research.

What the heck does it look like? And similarly, CCSSO is hearing from state leaders. Okay, if we wanted to support it, what’s the it? What are we trying to do? What would we create policy around?

How would we build standards around this? So it was kind of this perfect moment of, you know, really the yin and yang or the puzzle pieces coming together. And then it just so happened that Ryan and I are pretty crackerjack team. So we have worked together now, as he said, since 2015 on this work. Nothing like a good snowstorm to help as well.

Right. Exactly. Well, you’ve told us a little bit about where it started and why to appreciate. Could you tell us a little bit more about the actual educator competency work in the sense of like just how you would explain it to people that were interested? Yes.

So we do always like to begin a little bit with that origin story of not necessarily that Ryan and I met in a snowstorm, but the piece that really the reason we created them. Came from the field. It came from those early adopters, those early innovators who were saying, we need to do education differently to really better prepare each and every student for this rapidly changing future. And we don’t know what that looks like. And so it was really driven by trying to help folks get their hands around a more comprehensive sense of just what’s the it?

What does it mean to be a really stellar educator for learner centered approaches? So to build them, we started with what we know. So we looked at research on good teaching and learning. We looked at all the work that students at the center was building around theory evidence and practice and research around learner centered approaches. So we started with that.

And then we looked at existing frameworks. So we said, OK, well, what’s already out there for good teaching and learning? So we really wanted to kind of build on the shoulders of giants as we were trying to project ourselves towards a more future focused vision. So we then crosswalked something. I think it was 12 in the end, different versions of teacher standards.

And each time we kind of test ourselves at this point, we had a small group of organizations that were working real closely with us. And we kept saying, what’s different about this? What’s future focused about this? What’s truly learner centered about this? And so in each one of those iterations, we would drop some things, we would add something until we came up with this first set of, OK, we think this might be it.

But that was only six of us representing six or so organizations. So then we kind of brought it out to the field and we’ve done many, many versions after that of iterating the text with both online feedback and small focus groups and sending out drafts. And so all in all, the current competencies have, I think it’s something like 160, 170 different folks who have poked holes in it, torn it apart, put it back together. And we’re really proud of that because that’s it was so key to building this set to have all of those voices in there. And these are now in this current vision that includes students that includes civil rights leaders that includes twice the amount of educators and frontline classroom educators and we have before.

So really trying to build something that’s of the field. So that’s kind of where they came from. And a little bit of what’s in them is they’re grouped in kind of four big buckets, which we call domains. And that’s a way of just starting to get your handle around the stuff that’s there’s a lot there. So the first big bucket is the intrapersonal.

So what do I need to know? What do I need to reflect on myself in my own practice in my own mindsets in my own biases in order to be the best learner centered educator I can. The second bucket is interpersonal. So what do I need to do to relate to others? How do I talk to students and pull them into this work?

How do I meet with my fellow educators? How do I work with parents and community? The third bucket is cognitive. So what do I need to know in terms of my academic disciplines in terms of the subject matter? And then what do I need to know as far as developmental stages of the youth in front of me as far as what their magnet cognitive skills are?

And then fourth is the instructional. So what do I need to do? What is the pedagogy look like of learner centered work? How do I do collaborative group work or instructional rounds or project based inquiries? So those are the four ways that we’ve kind of grouped the competencies and I can say more about it, but I’ll pause for breath.

I appreciate that this represents so much input and has that voice at initiating that voice from teachers is really representative of how you shared that process. It reminds me have a lot of districts with thoughtfully build what would sometimes be called portrait of a graduate competencies or a vision and you’re doing that at that level too. With all the things we know to be true. I also, you know, I’m very, I’m familiar with this, this work that you’re done. I just love it.

That’s why I’m so excited to have this podcast with you today. I also would note that your educator competencies really are an instructional framework that people could take for their district about how we support and build professional learning for teachers in our system. So I want to say those things because I think people need to know where they could connect and if it starts to sound like portrait graduate competencies but how educators support them or teach and learning framework to support the portrait of a graduate. So really honoring that process and wanting people to understand those connections because I think this is a great work that represents a lot of thinking that people could build off of and add to but you can talk more about that later. But I really appreciate you sharing that process.

I think that really represents the dedication to what you guys believe in. Are there one you kind of walked us through a little bit of the domains. Would you want to walk us through maybe how they’re currently being used. Yeah. So through the process of doing the updates we were able to collect a lot of stories around where they’ve been utilized both from the kind of a school level but for me at the Council of Chiefs of State school officers really at the state level.

In Vermont they’ve incorporated the educator company and sees into their standards for teaching and leadership preparation programs are really trying to get the pre service work to make sure it’s aligned to some of the work they’re doing there in Arkansas. They built their designing for an innovation framework to guide schools seeking designation for schools of innovation and they needed some way to bring together different sets of research to help schools. Leaders understand the kinds of artifacts and evidence they needed to collect. And they use the educator competencies served as like a primary reference for that for that tool. So we’ve seen even states really be able to take them and leverage.

I know you’ve done you guys have been affiliated with some state work where people have done a state portrait graduate where you can see that these would be really helpful to help teachers build capacity in order to deliver on that right. Yeah and we’ve even seen I think it was Virginia they took them as part of their work to build out a profile of other Virginia educators so we’ve seen a different state be able to take that and think through what this is great founding work what is unique for our situation can we take from them. Wonderful. You recently updated this. What was the impetus for this what is different now.

Yeah so for the update there were really I think three major things we wanted to accomplish with the update. First kind of what I just talked about we really want to under have a better understanding of how they were being utilized the original set in the field. You know we’ll hit we heard anecdotes from different people emails at conferences but we wanted to have a better understanding of how they’ve been utilized across the country already. Second you know it had been five years since the original competencies had been released and a lot of change in this kind of personalized learning student center and learner centered area and it been growing so we wanted to make sure that the text still resonated and do any kind of updates that we needed to do to make sure it reflected the field as it was now and particularly around equity I think we wanted to make sure that equity and education equity was at the forefront of the competencies instead of kind of woven in I think at the original where we really wanted to bring it up at the forefront for this updated version.

And then the third was really clear out ways to organize the companies to make them more usable for the field. You know we do have the four domains but we also have some like theme tags throughout so if a teacher wanted to focus on a kind of social emotional learning their different competencies that are tagged throughout so they can. Dig into that specifically so that’s a way to kind of make them more usable for the field but then also develop more tools and other kind of creative ways to think through how to how to take these and kind of allow the field to kind of create their own use for them so developing some additional tools to support that. Wonderful. I want to highlight one of my favorite right from the very beginning one of the domains you referenced interpersonal competencies.

Just to play off what Ryan you were just sharing I mean it starts off by saying effective educators essentially demonstrated dedication to all learners, especially those historically marginalized and or least served by public higher education, reaching college career and civic readiness. So, more than words putting it into action. What does that look like how can we support. What are what’s the words for what we’re expecting of teachers and how can we build capacity and support them with training really just putting that right up at the forefront in the very beginning. And Rebecca one of the things that we tried to do that was something we heard in a lot of these focus groups was. We love what you’re putting forward and what does it look like so big part of what we built into this revision in particular is on the digital site there are videos artifacts tools and then we have also built our own so in addition to highlighting folks who have already done the great work in places you can see it or try out then we also built some guides particularly on things like centering equity so how do you start to have those conversations integrated with the competencies so how do you make sure that as Ryan said there it’s for granted throughout.

So that was really important to us so thanks thanks for pulling out that one. What’s your best hope for how these will be used or how can others get involved with with this tool and this resource. That’s a great question best hope is hard because that sounds like just one thing. You can say more than one. Yeah so many things that we’d love to come out of this but really they’re built to be true to form meaning that you can’t be a personalized learner centered educator if you’re not able to personalize and center your own tools and your own practice and your own.

So we really really tried to do that with this revision so there are so many different ways to interact with the text with the tools to use it so for me at least my best hope is that somebody finds something in there or everybody finds something in there that they can build from. Expand their own practice connect to things that are happening at the school at the district because there’s so many ways into this tool. It’s not a start at point a and end at point Z and if you deviate anywhere in between you know you’ve screwed up the alphabet. It really is enter it many different places grow practice and hopefully at the end be doing better work for for the students in front of you. So just I just really hope that people use it.

I mean that’s that’s ultimately for me but I don’t know Ryan you might have something more coherent than that to say. No, no absolutely I mean I think at the end of the day the hope is for the field to use it to just continuously build their capacity to do this work we know it’s hard work and we know that it takes time to really continuously hone your skills around and to really personalize student-centered approaches and we whatever way either a state district school individual teachers want to utilize it to fit their needs. I think it’s just wonderful and we’ve even heard all the different types of stories we’ve heard from different levels of the ecosystem they’ve been able to leverage them in their own unique way and I think it’s our hope is just continuously to do that and find ways to support them to continuously build their capacity. I will add just one more thing kind of building building from that that’s that’s slightly more concrete for what I answered but

when we first came out with the educator competencies we weren’t ready to suggest that they be used in fact we adamantly said they should not be used in any way that’s a value a tip, or that is going to be punitive to educators the field is so new we really want to just be encouraging. Use and while I certainly wouldn’t say we’ve gotten to a point that we would want them to be punitive quite the opposite. I do have hope now I feel like they and what we’ve seen not just I feel about what we’ve looked at in our research and as the field has grown and as evidence has grown around these practices. I feel confident in saying that if we were going to build new educator prep systems new licensure systems if we were able to really re envision how we built standards. At the very least I would hope that folks would be looking at this document and we do know again there’s a few places a few districts, a few states that are starting to use them as really leading how they would do that so ultimately I think my hope with that would be that we would be able to

at least use the competencies more to inform how we’re thinking about teaching and learning at a systemic level. Love that you highlighted that I think it’s super important that you also started off by acknowledging how much input teachers and educators had and how you intentionally surface to those desires of good teaching so that they showed up in these competencies. I think it’s usually a really good indicator of a tool that has been created or resource if teachers start asking like I could see that I would have preferred as an educator and a competency based personalized system or as an administrator that these would have spoke to me more that these would have been more helpful than the evaluation tool that I might have received or inherited. So when we think about those pieces, having teachers asked for that or maybe even if there’s a way that they can pull these in for their personal goals and enhance what they’re kind of maybe, I don’t want to say stuck with but maybe having to use that they could pull some of these competencies in for their goals to get more towards that personalized learning concept but it could certainly be a helpful way for aspirations that a district could grow into this. I love that it’s really reflecting what we know to be best for learners and that what would that look like for growth for teachers and that you framed it that way appreciate that so much.

When we think about what you’ve also highlighted that is was intentionally customizable flexible for local context which I think we’ve we’ve given some examples for that. What do you see is next for this work you you pointed out about having it pull in for you know teachers monitoring their growth. Is there any other connections in the future that you would hope would happen or that you know might happen that you could share. I think when one hope that you know this, like I mentioned one thing that we did want the start of this was to kind of learn more about where they’ve been utilized thus far. And one of the tools we did develop was an interactive map that actually pinpoints where the companies have been used from a state district school all other organizations. And that’s something that we want to be like a living breathing thing that’s continuously evolving.

And so we are encouraging folks that have utilized either this current set or the previous set to, you know, go to the go to our website where the companies are housed as students at the center hub.org slash ed comps and go and hit the explore button and you’ll see the how other district schools and states have utilized that and if you have a story we’d love to hear kind of how you use that at your school district name to the list and so we can continuously see how the field is leveraging them and be an opportunity for folks to connect and kind of build off each other. So that there is a kind of community of individuals and entities that have utilized them and can learn from one another. And they can also form networks right. They can reach out to people who are using them in similar ways.

Got it. That’s it is a big part of what we’re hoping to continue to build is that collaboration connection community all those great C words and so that that was really part of our intent in building the map rather than just sort of doing a report on what were they being used but so yeah we definitely hope to keep building that because that’s only as good as the folks who use it like more like many things so the more folks that are adding themselves to them at the more we are creating community of users. One other thing just to add to your question Rebecca is I have the privilege of being in an organization that enables the research geek in me to connect directly to profound work on both the ground level or closer to the ground level in schools with districts and states and then policy and so the educator competencies at KnowledgeWorks have a very live and active role because as we are starting to work in statewide transformation towards personalized competency based ed. They really are the backbone in the text of when we get down to that level of starting to work with coaches and district leaders and educators where we’re using them frequently and it’s been really really fun to see the

students do that and maybe it not just being kind of an academic exercise of trying to build standards for the field but then start to really have a home in the states that we’re working in and you know we keep getting nibbles of places where states are interested in thinking about integrating them more into their standards or their teacher development platforms so that is certainly something that we would love to keep supporting and again it’s a great partnership with CCSSO and KnowledgeWorks because we bring to really complementary strengths in helping states move in that direction so that’s someplace that hopefully will keep moving on and keep exploring with states. And I appreciate the fact that you have that map and so transparent that people can see so we also would encourage folks from what you’ve shared that have maybe pulled some of this into their work still super interesting and compelling information for you to know about even if they didn’t pull a lot and they just had a section or a domain that really spoke to the work they were doing. So ways that we could share on that map would be helpful to the work so encourage others to do that because I know there are a lot of people that look at these and talk about them and have encouraged great conversations for transformation. You mentioned instructional coaches I would just love to highlight that because I think that’s really a great tool if you have instructional coaches in your in your school or in your district how helpful these competencies could be in forming conversations and goals that don’t feel evaluated that are really focused on being supportive and promoting growth so appreciate that you’ve called that out as well.

One of my favorite parts of this new revision is that we’ve built a whole bunch and created a whole bunch of tools so for instructional coaches as Rebecca was just saying we’ve got self assessment tools we’ve got rubrics that are aligned to the competencies so great ways to use them and developmental ways as educators are trying to deepen and expand their practice. I sure would have loved to have had these about 20 years ago. This is such a great resource and I know it represents a lot of folks that have been in the work for a long time and new thinking that’s come to it and research so such a valuable tool. Where can people find out more you’ve listed a website you’ve what would you point them to is the first go to spot. So home base for the tool is that that landing spot that Ryan mentioned so students at the center hub is the place that they’re their house so that’s all one word students at the center hub dot org and then slash and comps Ed C O M P S.

And if you scroll down just a little bit there’s three really pretty boxes and that’s the first start of your interactive journey so if all you want to do is just download them that’s kind of the box on the left. If you want to start exploring as Ryan and Rebecca we’re just talking about this map head to the explore button. And if you want to start building your toolkit and your binder and playing around and go to the interactive button because that’s where one of my very favorite tools is which is the digitized version of the text. And that’s where you can choose if you want to look at just the foundational competencies or if you’re really interested if you’ve just come out of hopefully coming out of pandemic year and you really want to focus on upping your game and remote learning. There are some there’s a way to search on just remote learning and then each one of those is where you’ll find both additional tools resources and then acknowledging how much we love our wonky terms in education we even have a digital glossary.

So if you just want to kind of click around and play around and to that interact place. Thank you both. This work is not only important for educators wanting to move to a more learner centered approach as we’ve shared. But it’s also a great reminder that we are all learners and that of competencies are important enough of a learning structure for our learners. They are the right frame for adult learning as well. Thank you both Rebecca Wolf and Ryan McDonald for joining us today. Thanks for being on the Getting Smart podcast. Another thanks to our podcast sponsors Screencastify. To learn more about the power of video to engage learners check out screencastify.com slash Getting Smart. There’s a link in the show notes as well. For the Getting Smart podcast this is Jessica signing off.