What Happens When the System Defines the Student Experience?
The discourse presented in this podcast episode elucidates six pervasive conditions afflicting educational institutions: lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion. It posits that these conditions extend beyond theoretical constructs, manifesting tangibly in the lived experiences of students, educators, and families alike. The core inquiry of this episode confronts the profound question: what transpires when the systemic structures imposed upon educational settings ultimately shape the student experience? As we explore these dynamics, we recognize that intentions, no matter how noble, are rendered moot if the resultant experiences lack coherence and humanity. Thus, we embark on a critical examination of the intersection between systemic challenges and the imperative to foster meaningful, equitable, and growth-oriented educational environments.
Additional Notes
The initial discourse of this episode delineates six formidable conditions that contemporary educational institutions grapple with: lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion. These challenges are not merely theoretical constructs confined to administrative discussions; rather, they manifest palpably within the experiences of students, educators, and families alike. The discourse elucidates how these systemic issues coalesce to shape the educational landscape, creating an environment where students often perceive their learning journey as disjointed and devoid of coherence. As the speakers articulate, when adults within the educational ecosystem lack alignment, students encounter inconsistency in their learning experiences. The fragmentation of initiatives leads to feelings of disconnection, while the drift from purpose transforms schooling into a mere passage rather than a nurturing environment for growth. Furthermore, the conversation probes the implications of dehumanization, where students are reduced to data points rather than being recognized as unique individuals with distinct needs. This exploration raises critical questions about the efficacy of current educational practices and the importance of fostering a more humane and coherent educational experience.
Takeaways:
- In this inaugural episode of season 13, we identified six critical conditions schools are currently confronting.
- The conditions we discussed include lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion.
- It is essential to understand that these conditions manifest not merely on paper but profoundly impact the actual experiences of students and educators alike.
- When adults within educational systems lack alignment, students invariably contend with inconsistency in their learning experiences and environments.
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Transcript
In our first episode of season 13, we named six real conditions schools are facing.
Speaker A:Lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion.
Speaker A:But these conditions, they don't stay on paper.
Speaker A:They do not remain in strategic plans, in meeting agendas, leadership retreats, or district frameworks.
Speaker A:They become experience.
Speaker A:Students feel them.
Speaker A:Teachers feel them, leaders feel them, families feel them.
Speaker A:When adults are not aligned, students experience inconsistency.
Speaker A:When initiatives fragment, students experience disconnection.
Speaker A:When systems drift, students experience school as something to move through rather than something designed around their growth.
Speaker A:When people become data points, labels, scores, behaviors, or compliance concerns, the system becomes less human.
Speaker A:And when instruction erodes, students may complete the work without experiencing the kind of learning that changes them.
Speaker A:This episode asks a deeper question.
Speaker A:What happens when the system becomes the the student experience?
Speaker A:A new episode of the Wheelhouse begins right now.
Speaker A:Let's get oriented.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the wheelhouse.
Speaker A:I'm Dr. Grant Chandler, and I'm grateful to be joined again by the Wheelhouse team, Kathy Mone, Michael Pipa, and Dr. Alicia Munro as we continue the opening conversation for season 13.
Speaker A:In our first episode, we introduced the frame for this season six real conditions schools are facing Lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion.
Speaker A:Today, we want to go one layer deeper, because these conditions are not separate issues sitting in different corners of the system.
Speaker A:They interact.
Speaker A:They compound.
Speaker A:They shape the daily experience of students, teachers, leaders, and families.
Speaker A:And that matters because students do not experience our intentions.
Speaker A:They experience our coherence.
Speaker A:They do not experience the strategic plan as written.
Speaker A:They experience the strategic plan as lived.
Speaker A:They do not experience our initiatives as separate adult efforts.
Speaker A:They experience whether those efforts add up to something consistent, meaningful, and human.
Speaker A:They do not experience our belief that every student matters unless the system is designed in ways that help every student feel known, supported, challenged, and connected to a future worth pursuing.
Speaker A:So today, before we begin bringing guests into season 13, we want to sit with this idea.
Speaker A:The system is not separate from student experience.
Speaker A:The system becomes the student experience.
Speaker A:When adults lack alignment, students feel inconsistency.
Speaker A:When programs and priorities fragment, students feel disconnection.
Speaker A:When schools drift from purpose, students feel the distance.
Speaker A:When systems become efficient but less human, students feel reduced.
Speaker A:When instruction erodes, students feel the difference between completing assignments and experiencing real learning.
Speaker A:And when the future is unclear, students feel the gap between what schools say it is preparing them for and what the world is actually asking of them.
Speaker A:This isn't about blame, and it's not about suggesting that educators aren't working hard.
Speaker A:In fact, One of the painful truths of this conversation is that good people can work incredibly hard inside systems that still produce confusion, fragmentation and drift.
Speaker A:So the question for us today is not who's at fault.
Speaker A:The better question is, what are the conditions we have to notice more clearly, because if leaders only respond to events, they remain reactive.
Speaker A:If leaders learn to notice conditions, they can become more navigational, they can begin to see the patterns beneath the problems, they can begin to ask different questions, and they can begin to realign the work around students, purpose, instruction, and humanity.
Speaker A:So today we're asking what happens when the system becomes the student experience?
Speaker A:And what does that require us to notice?
Speaker A:Before we bring other voices into this season, let's get oriented.
Speaker A:Good morning.
Speaker A:I'm Dr. Grant Chandler.
Speaker A:It's another Tuesday in the wheelhouse.
Speaker A:Good morning to the Wheelhouse team.
Speaker A:Kathy Moni, Michael Pipa and Dr. Alicia Monroe.
Speaker A:Good morning.
Speaker B:Good morning.
Speaker C:Oh, the team's all together this week.
Speaker C:We missed you, Alicia.
Speaker A:We have tracked her down, we hunted for her, we found her.
Speaker A:No escape, and she is back in the wheelhouse for another season.
Speaker A:It's good to have the entire team together as we continue to launch season 13.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:Good morning.
Speaker C:Good morning.
Speaker A:Everybody doing well?
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker D:It's gorgeous.
Speaker A:It is July, right?
Speaker A:This episode drops on July 14, so I'm not going to say that July 14 is almost the halfway mark in the month of July.
Speaker A:I will never say something as evil as that.
Speaker A:So happy July, everyone.
Speaker C:I do not like it when you do this countdown with, you know, you have to draw attention to these things.
Speaker C:I don't like it at all.
Speaker C:Let it.
Speaker C:Let it just slow down, please.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker C:Please and thank you.
Speaker A:I hope wherever you are and you're listening, that it's a nice, slow, calm July for you, because everybody deserves a nice, slow, calm, relaxing July.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker D:That's what we do at the wheelhouse.
Speaker D:We pump the brakes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Lots of educators out there trying to be enjoying this.
Speaker C:A little bit of repeat reflection, planning all things so.
Speaker C:Grant Chandler.
Speaker C:Stop it.
Speaker A:I know July is the time usually when superintendents and other district leaders kind of take their vacations too.
Speaker A:So let's just.
Speaker A:I think July should just last a long time.
Speaker C:Agreed.
Speaker D:One long July.
Speaker A:One long July.
Speaker A:That feels like six, right?
Speaker A:Wouldn't that be incredible?
Speaker D:It would, yeah.
Speaker C:And for those of us who live in the seasonal changes in February feels like 7.
Speaker C:February with the cold and the snow and everything else, we just need to flip the script and say, you know what?
Speaker C:July.
Speaker C:We claim July to be that very long month of the Year.
Speaker A:I think that's a great idea, right?
Speaker A:I think that's a great idea.
Speaker A:Well, so, hey, my friends, in the last episode, we identified kind of the theme of the season, and we talked about, and we named them those six conditions that every school faces.
Speaker A:And when we use the term school, we're talking about school, district, you know, the whole organization, right?
Speaker A:That there are these six conditions.
Speaker A:Um, and if you can't remember what they are, we'll list them for you again here in a few minutes.
Speaker A:Lack of alignment, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, future ready confusion.
Speaker A:There's a lot of them, right, that are all there.
Speaker A:And we talked a lot about them last week, and it was Alicia who said, you know, because we originally were talking about five conditions, and she's like, oh, no, no, no, there's one more.
Speaker A:And it produces everything else, and that's lack of alignment.
Speaker A:So let's talk about that.
Speaker A:And what I really want to focus on today is we named them last week, but how do they.
Speaker A:Those six conditions, how do they become what students experience?
Speaker A:So we, the educators, are fighting those six conditions to whatever degree you're fighting them.
Speaker A:But regardless of where we are in the fight, those six conditions create very interesting.
Speaker A:I guess we'll use that word for right now, really interesting experiences from the student lens.
Speaker A:And they have absolutely nothing to say about those six conditions.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They're simply on the receiving end.
Speaker A:So let's think about this.
Speaker A:Lack of alignment creates mixed direction.
Speaker A:Nobody knows where we're going.
Speaker A:Mixed direction leads to fragmentation.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:We try a lot of things, and they're, you know, everything.
Speaker A:System is broken.
Speaker A:Fragmentation makes drift easier.
Speaker A:It's really easy to drift if we.
Speaker A:If we're not coherently moving toward a common goal.
Speaker A:Drift often produces dehumanization.
Speaker A:Dehumanization allows instructional erosion to hide in plain sight.
Speaker A:It's just right there.
Speaker A:And all of it gets intensified by future confusion.
Speaker A:Michael and I were talking with a future guest on the Wheelhouse yesterday, and, you know, this idea of future confusion was.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Even though we didn't name it in the conversation, it was like it was screaming, right?
Speaker A:It was screaming in the conversation that we are unsure, right?
Speaker A:We are unsure what.
Speaker A:What that holds.
Speaker A:So we all know that schools are often full of really good intentions.
Speaker A:Adults are working hard.
Speaker A:Programs may be well designed, meetings may be productive, plans may be thoughtful.
Speaker A:But students don't experience our intentions.
Speaker A:They experience coherence or the lack of it, right?
Speaker A:And all of those human conditions or those system conditions that.
Speaker A:That we just talked about.
Speaker A:So I just want to like, let's talk about some examples of that.
Speaker A:I'm going to throw a couple of thoughts out there and this amazing team is going to provide some examples of where does that really happen.
Speaker A:For example, adults say relationships matter, but schedules, our use of time leaves no time for connection.
Speaker A:How's that play out?
Speaker C:That's the one that really, like just spoke to me with, really thinking about this conversation.
Speaker C:Because just as we were saying, you know, during this summertime, there's this relaxation, but there's also a significant amount of planning.
Speaker C:So when we're planning in our schedules, we build these master schedules that aren't coherent for students.
Speaker C:They're not, they don't allow for that time for connection.
Speaker C:We just move them through.
Speaker C:It's back to this, hurting our students.
Speaker C:And at what point do we slow down and connect this, this human to human, the relationships.
Speaker C:But yet every single educator, everyone I've met anyway, they.
Speaker C:They talk about and will say, of course relationships matter.
Speaker C:You know, why, why wouldn't I say that?
Speaker C:Why wouldn't I?
Speaker C:But then they push, push, push, push, and don't build schedules even that allow for time for human to human connections.
Speaker B:So in response to that, Kathy and I agree.
Speaker B:I think we focus on students a lot, but we need to also focus on educators, right?
Speaker B:When do educators have an opportunity to build relationship within themselves, which then provides an example of how we build relationships with students.
Speaker B:I do respect and honor the need for schedule, but what I see is the inflexibility in those structures to not allow for the human condition.
Speaker B:And then when we do try to make room for that and have permission to be free, we get a slap on the hand because we are not sticking to a rigid and structured schedule.
Speaker B:So I'm glad we're having this conversation because as I sit with superintendents and principals over the summer, there's this value kind of conversation around.
Speaker B:Alicia.
Speaker B:So what do I do and how do I validate and where is there wiggle room?
Speaker B:And we should not be having that conversation when we are trying to hear and not heard individuals in an ecosystem.
Speaker D:It makes me think of lack of alignment, Alicia, that when we say we value relationships, but we continue to promote a structure, a schedule that leaves little or no room for the development of relationships, we.
Speaker D:And then we feel tyrannized and imprisoned by that structure.
Speaker D:What about the conversation that leaders can be encouraging, prioritizing among their instructional staff that while this may be the structure and there are structures we cannot change, like the scope and sequence for the state sanctioned Courses that must be taught in our school.
Speaker D:Can we have a conversation about practices that are regular and continuous, that prioritize humanity and relationships while we meet the objectives of these structures, we cannot change.
Speaker D:And that's where the lack of alignment seems to happen.
Speaker D:We say we care, but we don't prioritize those conversations.
Speaker D:We don't use what time we have to prioritize those conversations.
Speaker A:And so the one thing that we have total control over, total control over, is how we use our time states only tell us how many hours of instruction we have to deliver in a year for it to count.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:How we use them is totally an adult decision.
Speaker A:And so either this is where the lack of alignment and lack of coherence comes in.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Either we value student relationships, adult relationships, or we don't.
Speaker A:How many times have we all heard.
Speaker A:I heard it when we were rolling out powerful student care a couple years ago.
Speaker A:Oh, Dr. Chandler, absolutely.
Speaker A:But we just don't have time to do that.
Speaker A:Then don't say.
Speaker A:You cannot say then that your students.
Speaker A:You treat your students as if they're distinctive and irreplaceable because you don't.
Speaker A:You don't.
Speaker A:We either value relationships human to human.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Human to human, or we don't.
Speaker A:Here's another one, another little contradiction that involves all six of these conditions.
Speaker A:Adults say instruction matters.
Speaker A:Good pedagogy matters.
Speaker A:But our meetings and our conversations focus mostly on compliance.
Speaker B:I would also add compliance and complaint.
Speaker A:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker A:Where's.
Speaker A:How does that play out now?
Speaker B:Let's unpack that.
Speaker A:Go ahead.
Speaker C:Yeah, she as.
Speaker C:She kind of.
Speaker C:If you could see her just kind of sit back with a huge old.
Speaker A:Smile on her face.
Speaker C:Okay, let's deal with that one.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And that goes back to what you were saying, Alicia, about these adult relationships and how do we build that and.
Speaker C:And really develop that and nurture that within this ecosystem?
Speaker C:And so if we're not, then it is compliance and complaint.
Speaker C:And then that's your.
Speaker C:That's the culture in which you are nurturing because you nurture it either way.
Speaker C:And that's what's going on within the adults.
Speaker C:And then that bleeds into what's happening with the students, because how could it not?
Speaker D:I remember as a middle school administrator, working with my instructional teams at 6th and 7th and 8th grades and wanting to, during our weekly team meetings, talk about student work, take a look at what students are doing you.
Speaker D:And in fairness to my instructional colleagues who were happy to do that, they also had a lot of questions that were practical that time sensitive business that needed to get done.
Speaker D:And we had 45 minutes once a week.
Speaker D:So it was a collaborative conversation about during these 45 minutes, which are really 40 minutes, how do we respect the 40 minutes we have?
Speaker D:What rules can help us respect that so that we're not arriving late and leaving early?
Speaker D:None of us.
Speaker D:And how can we ensure that the important pieces we've identified get talked about every week?
Speaker D:And what do we do when there isn't enough time?
Speaker D:And that really became the work in the first two weeks of every single school year to come to an agreement, an agreement about how we were going to use this.
Speaker D:Very small and insufficient.
Speaker D:But that's what I think of immediately.
Speaker C:Yeah, because then that goes back to, we say we value relationships, but then our schedules don't honor that.
Speaker C:You know, so when we think about this kind of negotiation between leadership and often are our unions, how, where's that relationship?
Speaker C:So that they honor and value the same things, so that they're building together these schedules that then allow for the adults to have meaningful time, meaningful connections, so that that again can translate, can move into how we're interacting with our students.
Speaker D:As a school leader, if I say I care about pedagogical excellence, instructional excellence, am I showing up at the places where that instructional excellence is happening?
Speaker D:Am I showing up at the moments where students are proudly demonstrating their learning?
Speaker D:Am I there because I can say whatever I want, but if I'm not bearing witness, if I'm not participating when invited to, that's as loud and profoundly articulated a message as well.
Speaker A:But thinking about all of this time,.
Speaker B:And I'm hearing a lot of symptoms and Grant and I do a lot of work on problem of practice and that whole, that whole action planning process.
Speaker B:I think the root cause is how are we defining time, right?
Speaker B:What is quality of time and do we know how much time we have?
Speaker B:I hearken back to what Kathy said and I did this exercise with a group that I was working with around time.
Speaker B:Do we know our master agreements enough to know what is our responsibility for time?
Speaker B:And that's really important because we're all well intentioned in those spaces.
Speaker B:I truly don't believe that teachers and principals and educators, that superintendents, all that are in the space, are not well intentioned with regards to students and kids and learners.
Speaker B:But do we know how much time we actually had?
Speaker B:You know, if we don't know these, the documents and the negotiations that do hold us to structure and time, then we really don't know how much time we have so as Kathy talked about collective bargaining and unions, Elise hinted on that, do we know our master agreements enough to know how much time do teachers need to spend in this collaborative space, possibly building relationships?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:How do principals hold themselves accountable for structuring that time?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And how do we validate this time to superintendents and the powers that be, the board, et cetera, community stakeholders, et cetera?
Speaker B: embark on thoughts around the: Speaker A:And so I want to take this conversation and I want to shift it, because we have been focusing in the last few minutes on adults, right?
Speaker A:And what adults are doing as they're navigating these six conditions.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:We're talking about all of them together.
Speaker A:Lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion.
Speaker A:But if adults.
Speaker A:If adults are struggling with how to effectively use time, if we say.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If we say relationships matter, then what are students experiencing?
Speaker A:What does the student experience look like if we haven't solved that issue?
Speaker A:So we're hurting them, right?
Speaker A:Students are telling us that they're being hurted.
Speaker A:The result here in this conversation is that what students experience is being herded.
Speaker A:Adults aren't sure how to use the time.
Speaker A:They feel like they're controlled by the time.
Speaker A:We haven't solved the issue of how do we use time to build relationships.
Speaker A:So what happens?
Speaker A:Adults are herded.
Speaker A:Students are herded, right?
Speaker A:That's the experience that happens.
Speaker A:And when we think about instruction, if we're focusing on compliance, we say instruction matters, but it's really.
Speaker A:We're complaining.
Speaker A:To quote Alicia, we often complain about compliance.
Speaker A:So how many times do we hear, you know, why is Johnny doing badly?
Speaker A:Well, because he doesn't.
Speaker A:Because he doesn't.
Speaker A:And then you can fill in the blank, right, because he doesn't.
Speaker A:So what are students experiencing?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:They are being.
Speaker A:They are being.
Speaker A:They are experiencing a focus on simply what I do or what I don't do and not on instruction.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:On really, really good.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:I mean, again, I just want us to focus on the flip side for a moment, which is, what's this look like for kids?
Speaker A:What's this look like for kids?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The kid is, you know, we're talking about whether Johnny did his homework last night, as if that's the driving force of whether my instruction can really nail it or not.
Speaker A:What about this?
Speaker A:And again, I want you to think about this from the student lens.
Speaker A:We say future readiness matters.
Speaker A:But how much of the time do our students spend engaged in passive lit learning?
Speaker C:I was having this conversation with my daughter yesterday actually and the, this, this task driven versus learning, right?
Speaker C:So it's really students, I just need a complete task.
Speaker C:I need to just check these off.
Speaker C:And then, you know, her response as this, you know, brilliant 33 year old was just, so we send them into the world completely ill prepared for whatever their next step is.
Speaker C:So often it's this, I just have to complete tasks.
Speaker C:It's not about my learning.
Speaker C:So there's confusion, there's frustration, it's chronic absenteeism.
Speaker C:Why do I show up when it's just I, I can just complete these tasks?
Speaker C:So there are all of these things that students are feeling when it's, well, this doesn't make me feel valued.
Speaker C:It doesn't make me feel as if I belong and that I'm distinctive and irreplaceable.
Speaker A:How much time do students spend in whole group instruction where the conversation is between one teacher and one student and the other 29 sit there, right?
Speaker B:I think it's deeper than that, right?
Speaker B:We're talking about the human factor in the teaching and learning.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:That's really, really important.
Speaker B:But then we have the added digital technology and digital platforms that are supposed to supplement the learning process, but oftentimes they supplant it, right?
Speaker B:So you have these digital platforms that are actually doing the teaching for teachers and there is a required amount of time that these students must be on these platforms.
Speaker B:So therefore it limits that human interaction, that human engagement even more, which deepens the problem because the way educators are interpreting it is okay, if I have this digital platform teaching for me, then I only have to be prepared for 20 minutes of a 45 minute or 90 minute period because my students must be on this platform.
Speaker B:There has to be a good synthesis and synergy of how we use all of these wonderful teaching tools to make it a human driven ecosystem for the learner experience.
Speaker D:That is such an important point, I think, about machine intelligence versus social intelligence.
Speaker D:And when you have the wrong driver leading things, in this case the digital technologies driving what learning is going to look like in a classroom, you have the wrong driver out front.
Speaker D:When we keep in mind what the most important value is that social learning theory for decades and decades and decades has made clear the primary place interaction plays in our young people, attaining a commanding understanding of a concept or skill.
Speaker D:Never are you going to let the technology structure what the classroom learning experience is going to be.
Speaker D:You're Going to make sure that social intelligence is in that top priority slot and everything is in service to that.
Speaker A:It's the human in the loop, says Dr. Janice Gobert.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So here we are with all of these conditions.
Speaker A:We say instruction matters, and yet how many of our students are experiencing passive learning?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Everything that is put in front of them is a passive learning experience.
Speaker A:Let me push a little farther.
Speaker A:I got two more of these for us today.
Speaker A:We say that adults.
Speaker A:We say that adults say equity matters, right?
Speaker A:Most adults would say.
Speaker A:Very few educators would say, I hope that equity doesn't matter, but access to that equity depends on the teacher.
Speaker A:So if that's true, what do students experience?
Speaker B:If, if, if our listeners can only see our faces and expression.
Speaker A:Okay, okay, it's time to go video.
Speaker B:I'm sitting with pursed lips.
Speaker B:Kathy is rolling her eyes in her head, and Mike is just like sitting there like, okay, bring it.
Speaker B:So it is interesting.
Speaker B:I'm a wait till my fellow co host start the response to this question.
Speaker D:I remember being put on the hot seat by a district leader who shared in a leadership meeting with us the kinds of parental requests that regularly occur over the summer.
Speaker D:And I was very familiar with them as middle school administrator, but just simply asked us the question, why do you think these requests come in?
Speaker D:So we had no problem answering that question.
Speaker D:And her next question is, why is there such variance between the levels of excellence students are going to experience?
Speaker D:Why is there variation classroom to classroom?
Speaker D:Why does that happen?
Speaker D:And that was a hard question for us to answer without us feeling ultimately responsible.
Speaker A:Because we allow it to happen.
Speaker A:That's how it happens.
Speaker D:Allow it to happen because we allow it to happen.
Speaker D:Because there are important conversations, some of which are uncomfortable, all of which are important and essential to creating equity.
Speaker C:We're constantly having these conversations, right?
Speaker C:That same kind of conversation, Michael, because it's uncomfortable, because you have to put up a mirror, right?
Speaker C:You've got to really look at yourself to be able to understand then what students are experiencing.
Speaker C:So when a student shows up in a space where they're not being honored and valued, then how.
Speaker C:How am I supposed to feel?
Speaker C:So you think about our students that are marginalized in that we're.
Speaker C:We're attempting or not attempting to ensure that they have a space in that room, that they're showing up.
Speaker C:And we value who they are as a human and they're not able to feel that when everything is fragmented.
Speaker B:So I guess the question is, do we have enough time to create and sustain that space, number one.
Speaker B:And do we Know our students enough, back to relationships, right?
Speaker B:Remember, we started with relationships, moved to time, and this is where we are talking about equity, to really get to know our students.
Speaker B:And therefore, we would know how much time we need to create and honor that space.
Speaker B:We would know who and why to advocate, and then we could move them forward to reach their potential.
Speaker B:But if we don't have the space to do that, right.
Speaker B:Or the opportunity to advocate for that, and I could go on and on and on, then equity becomes a real hard variant and sometimes should not even be part of our vocabulary because we're not doing it or we're not doing it well, and we have to be truthful to ourselves around that.
Speaker A:So this conversation is really about this dichotomy of what we say is important, our intentions as good people.
Speaker A:As good people.
Speaker A:And the whole point of this episode, our dear listeners, right.
Speaker A:Is that often what we intend as adults gets mixed in with these six conditions, right?
Speaker A:These six conditions get in there and make it more complicated, right?
Speaker A:And the end result is students are experiencing something far different than what we say.
Speaker A:What we say is something that's really important to us, right?
Speaker A:What teacher, what school would say that instruction isn't important?
Speaker A:Not very many people would say it's not important.
Speaker A:And yet we spend, right?
Speaker A:But yet what do kids experience on the other end of that?
Speaker A:Same with relationships.
Speaker A:Same with this conversation that we're having.
Speaker A:And if we believe.
Speaker A:If we believe that equity matters and we say that most places do, right?
Speaker A:Most places do to some degree, they'll say that they might use different language.
Speaker A:Then how come it varies depending on what teacher, what counselor, what program?
Speaker A:Why is it that it's not.
Speaker A:I mean, you either have equity or you don't.
Speaker A:There's no middle ground.
Speaker A:It's not like, I mean, you can't say, well, we have equity for some, because equity for some means you don't have equity.
Speaker A:It doesn't work that way.
Speaker A:It doesn't work that way.
Speaker A:You either have it or you don't.
Speaker A:And if it's dependent on which adult you are engaging with, then you don't have equity.
Speaker A:Instead, your value, your value here is trying to avoid those difficult conversations that you don't want to have because you got to call it out, right?
Speaker A:You got to call it out.
Speaker A:And so this conversation is an important conversation for us just to understand that often what we intend as adults, good, caring, loving, highly trained people, that what we intend isn't always what kids are experiencing, right?
Speaker A:On the opposite.
Speaker A:And we're just shedding light on that, right?
Speaker A:We're just saying, hey, we're not saying anybody's bad.
Speaker A:We're not saying systems are bad.
Speaker A:But as we're relaxing in July and we're thinking about, we're reflecting on the thinking about 26, 27.
Speaker A:I just want to highlight what happens when we have these six conditions that we named are real.
Speaker A:They're absolutely real.
Speaker A:And this is what happens on the end result for students and for adults.
Speaker A:One more and then we're going to go, huh?
Speaker A:What's this all mean?
Speaker A:Adults will say every student matters.
Speaker A:Most often they'll say that, right?
Speaker A:I haven't met very many adults, educators who would say, okay, so that student over there doesn't matter.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So we only care about these.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I'm sure there are some rare examples.
Speaker A:But you know, for the by and large, most educators would say that every student matters.
Speaker A:We prefer the word each.
Speaker A:But you know, we'll go with every for a moment.
Speaker A:Why is it then, if we say that, why is it that some of our students have to navigate this complex, difficult system alone?
Speaker A:If we believe that and if we say and if we value that every student matters, how come some of our students are doing this alone?
Speaker B:I think it's because although it's an ecosystem of humans, we are not driving the system.
Speaker B:Humans are not driving the system.
Speaker B:The system is driving human decision.
Speaker B:That's a very different situational strategy.
Speaker B:Even though it is a human system, humans don't really control.
Speaker B:All voices are not elevated, all voices are not heard, all experiences are not seen and valued.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:The system and the structure of the system, the policies, the protocols, the statutes, the legislation, everything else on top of that drives the human decision making.
Speaker B:With that, the human element becomes slowly but surely diminished because we are structured in our thinking and our moving according to the practice, protocols and routines that govern the system.
Speaker B:So when you have those kind of conditions, it's hard for equity or any human centered empathy.
Speaker B:I could go on and on and on and on to actually coexist well in that space because there's no room for that with everything else.
Speaker B:So I think we have to look at it.
Speaker B:Are we really human, human driven in us, in our centeredness around the system, or are this is the system really coaxing and moving our decisions forward?
Speaker B:That makes a, that's a real dichotomy and a different conversation.
Speaker B:But that is very truthful,.
Speaker C:I want to say.
Speaker C:Yes, but this goes back to what Michael was saying about, you know, having this conversation at one point around.
Speaker C:So why, why do students want a certain class over others?
Speaker C:You know, so yes, there are all of these, these compounding factors.
Speaker C:And I love the way that you said that, Alicia.
Speaker C:Are we driving the system or is the system driving us?
Speaker C:But as humans, I get to decide that I'm going to know the humans in front of me.
Speaker C:How difficult is it to know a student's name and know how to pronounce their name?
Speaker C:How difficult is it to honor pronouns?
Speaker C:How those, those are things that we as adults, simple things as humans that make a monumental impact on these lives.
Speaker C:That simplicity.
Speaker C:Regardless of all of this other, we can make those choices.
Speaker C:So when Stuart talking about the student experience and with this episodes and how do these things then impact students?
Speaker C:We have as adults con control within that of how we interact with the humans that we are just absolutely privileged to serve.
Speaker D:I want to add to that beautiful explanation, Cass, that when Alicia talks about the system being the driver and not the humans in it, you know, as a school, when you are disrupting or attempting to disrupt that reality, when something like a child study team feels necessary and gets formed in response to the question, does each child know that she matters?
Speaker D:The child study team becomes an instrument that elevates the voice of individual teachers who are concerned about each of their kids.
Speaker D:And so then those concerns get focused on by a committed group of adults in that school.
Speaker D:And we start asking questions, what do we know about this child?
Speaker D:What do we know about this child's family?
Speaker D:What do we know about the needs of this child?
Speaker D:What do we know about this child's hopes?
Speaker D:That's when you know you're disrupting and trying to turn that dynamic right side so that humans now are driving and not a system.
Speaker A:But we know.
Speaker B:I think that's a good start.
Speaker B:I think a lot of these, these, whether it's collaborative planning, child study, and we could go on, I think they start off well intentioned.
Speaker B:But then towards the end, because there's a lack of time, I think our students are being pushed through processes that have slowly but surely become dehumanized.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because at the end I'm looking at IEPs and all of them have a similar diagnosis code.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And Johnny is not Jose, and Maria is not Sally, but they all have the same diagnosis code.
Speaker B:So where along the way do we get lost?
Speaker B:And that's what we talked about in previous seasons.
Speaker B:Where along the way do we get lost?
Speaker B:And the question is, why?
Speaker B:Why do we get lost?
Speaker B:Is it the lack of relationship?
Speaker B:It's the lack of time?
Speaker B:Is it because the system is driving human decision making and human interaction.
Speaker B:Where along the way do we get lost?
Speaker B:And I think that's a really valid question.
Speaker A:So as we wrap up this episode, I want to speak to leaders for a moment.
Speaker A:And if you're a teacher listening, I want you to listen to this, because I want you to have this conversation with your leaders in case they didn't hear it.
Speaker A:Most of our improvement efforts, and again, I'm going to generalize, so I'm not saying all, but most of our improvement efforts tend to deal with events or symptoms.
Speaker A:We think about how we organize our meetings, we think about low scores, we think about staff frustrations, uneven implementations of a program, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:Those are all events.
Speaker A:If we're really going to solve these things and we're really going to eliminate the huge disparity between what we say and what we intend and what students experience, leaders have to look underneath all of that.
Speaker A:Alicia and I talk about root cause all the time, right?
Speaker A:In our work, I want you to jump to.
Speaker A:Here's what we think is the root cause.
Speaker A:These six conditions, lack of alignment, fragmentation, drift, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion, are the conditions that we need to be solving for because anything else is incremental as we think about moving season 13 forward, right?
Speaker A:We've identified these conditions, and we've spent a little bit of time today talking about there are some really negative things that happen when these conditions are strong in terms of what students are experiencing.
Speaker A:A lot of our kids, not all, but a lot of our kids are not experiencing what we want them to be experiencing.
Speaker A:To solve that, we've really got to think about how these six conditions play out in our district, in our school building, in our classrooms.
Speaker A:Because at the end of the day, the goal, right, my goal, I'm sure I'll speak for the four of us.
Speaker A:Our goal is not just test scores, right?
Speaker A:Our goal is that kids all, all, Each.
Speaker A:Each.
Speaker A:Each student experiences what we say we want them to experience.
Speaker A:That's our goal and that's what this podcast is all about.
Speaker A:So stay tuned.
Speaker A:We have exciting guests that are going to join us throughout the summer to talk about how this plays out from a multitude of different lenses.
Speaker A:I'm super excited to begin that series of conversations with our guests.
Speaker A:Michael, Kathy, Alicia.
Speaker A:Thank you again for another great conversation.
Speaker B:Yay.
Speaker A:As we close the second episode of season 13, I want to hold onto one idea.
Speaker A:Students do not experience our intentions.
Speaker A:They experience our coherence.
Speaker A:They experience the system we've actually built, not just the one we hoped we were building not just the one described in the strategic plan, not just the one named in our mission statement, the one they move through every day.
Speaker A:And that's why these six conditions matter so much.
Speaker A:Lack of alignment is not just an adult leadership issue.
Speaker A:Fragmentation is not just an organizational problem.
Speaker A:Drift isn't something that happens quietly in the background.
Speaker A:Dehumanization is not always dramatic, but it is always consequential.
Speaker A:Instructional erosion is not always obvious, especially when classrooms appear calm, busy, or compliant.
Speaker A:And future confusion is not just a philosophical concern.
Speaker A:It shapes what we prepare students for, what we ask of them, and what we fail to imagine on their behalf.
Speaker A:The system becomes the student experience.
Speaker A:That's the hard truth, but it's also the hopeful invitation.
Speaker A:If the system becomes the student experience, then changing the system can change the experience.
Speaker A:Realignment can create clarity, coherence can create connection.
Speaker A:Human centered leadership can restore dignity, and strong instruction can deepen learning.
Speaker A:And a clear sense of the future can help schools prepare students not just to graduate, but to navigate life with purpose, confidence, and possibility.
Speaker A:In the episodes ahead, we'll begin inviting guests into this conversation.
Speaker A:We'll listen for how these conditions show up in real schools, real classrooms, and real leadership decisions, and real student lives.
Speaker A:We will not be listening for easy answers, but we will be listening for clarity, for courage, for humanity, for the places where schools are learning to interrupt drift, resist fragmentation, restore alignment, protect dignity, strengthen instruction, and make sense of the future.
Speaker A:To Kathy Mone, Michael Pipa, and Dr. Alicia Munro, thank you again for helping us deepen this opening conversation.
Speaker A:And to our listeners, thank you for continuing to join us in the wheelhouse.
Speaker A:The work is complex.
Speaker A:The conditions are real, but so is the possibility.
Speaker A:Stay oriented.
Speaker A:We'll see you next week.
