Moving Beyond the Fourth Wall

Not all learning is standards-based and not all learning is tied to a specific course or to a specific discipline.

The academic world is artificial. Learning is so much bigger than progress reports, report cards, state assessments, and the five paragraph essay? We invented some of those things to live within the artificiality of the classroom. Let’s connect the classroom to the world beyond. And COVID has shown us it’s possible - not only possible, but preferred. We scratched the surface even with little preparation. Now we have the time to rethink.

Standards are great. But, SO WHAT? How do we connect those to life? What do we really want our students to engage with and how do we use all that we know to create learning goals, experiences, and ways of measuring that move learning beyond the “fourth wall”?

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About the Podcast

The Wheelhouse

Exploring Teaching, Learning, & Leading

The Wheelhouse exists to create an inclusive community of empowered educators who believe that, together, we can disrupt the transactional herding nature of schooling to create districts, schools, and classrooms where each student feels confident, optimistic, capable, well-supported, and emboldened to be and to become who they are meant to be.

Guiding Principles
1. We are steadfastly committed to each learner and each educator believing they are distinctive and irreplaceable.
2. We believe that educating our children should be a humanizing, relational, and transformational endeavor. All else is secondary.
3. We believe that dignity is a birthright; it is not earned. Each child deserves a future filled with open doors and unlimited possibilities. Our work is in service to this central aspiration.
4. We believe that each human life is unique and precious; as such we are compelled to remove aspects of schooling that disregard any student’s dignity.

About your host

Grant Chandler

Along with Kathleen Budge, Grant A. Chandler, Ph.D. is the author Powerful Student Care: Honoring Each Learning as Distinctive & Irreplaceable (ASCD, 2023). Chandler brings over 35 years of practical experience as a high school teacher, building and central office administrator, higher education dean, professional learning director in an outreach department at a large research university, and as a technical support provider and executive coach. He is currently the president and chief executive officer of Students Matter. Since 2005, Chandler has provided technical support to over 350 districts in developing systemic approaches to solving student learning issues and was recognized by the US Department of Education as a national expert in small learning communities. He has designed and led professional learning experiences at many levels of the K-12 arena and for many different audiences and has conducted numerous workshops at national, state, and regional conferences. His consultancies include boards of education, state and regional service providers; as well as individual schools and local districts across the United States and internationally. In his spare time, he’s writing a children’s book and raises standard poodles for animal assisted activities. Contact him at grantchandler@ourstudentsmatter.org or www.linkedin.com/in/grant-a-chandler.