The Minimalist Educator Podcast
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 045: Creating Safe Spaces for Open Conversations in Classrooms with Jennifer Orr
Unlock the secrets of fostering engaging classroom conversations that can transform your teaching experience. Join us as we chat with Jennifer Orr, a seasoned elementary school teacher and author, whose insights are a game-changer for educators, especially those working with English language learners. Jennifer shares her incredible journey of spearheading an initiative that revolutionized student engagement in her school, offering practical tips on leveraging students' existing conversation skills and integrating spontaneous discussions. Her enthusiasm and tried-and-true methods will inspire you to bring more active listening and participation into your classroom.
We also tackle the pivotal role of inclusivity in classroom conversations. Learn how to build a trusting community where students feel safe to express themselves and engage in respectful dialogue about complex topics. Jennifer discusses daily morning meetings and low-risk discussions as gateways to deeper conversations, emphasizing the importance of curiosity and active listening. Additionally, discover how thoughtful leadership and technology can enhance academic conversations, empowering both teachers and students. If you're looking to create a more engaging and inclusive classroom environment, this episode is packed with actionable advice and real-life stories that you won't want to miss.
Jen's books:
- Demystifying Discussion: How to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills, K-5
- We're Gonna Keep On Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom
This episode is sponsored by Plan Z Professional Learning Services: forward-thinking educator support.
Buy The Minimalist Teacher book on Amazon.
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The Minimalist Educator Podcast is a Plan Z Professional Learning Services adventure.
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musiewski-Borneman and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:In this episode, jennifer speaks to us about the value of classroom conversations and gives us some valuable tips on how to achieve this. Her pare-down pointer is to leave yourself a quick to-do list before leaving school for the day. Jennifer Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than two decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She's the author of Demystifying Discussion how to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills K-5, and the co-author of we're Going to Keep on Talking how to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. She is a National Board Certified Teacher, a teacher consultant with the Northern Virginia Writing Project and a frequent mentor to new and pre-service teachers.
Speaker 3:Welcome everyone to today's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today, christine and I are excited to talk with author Jen Orr. Welcome to the show, jen, thank you. So we've known each other for a long time and we've seen a lot of things that each other have done, and you are a classroom teacher as well as a two-time book author, which is a fairly big deal, I think, as a classroom teacher, to like write a book at the same time, which also Christine has done during COVID. So the one of your books is on classroom discussions with students and the other was a co-authored book, also on discussions around race and equity. How did you or where did this love of discussions come for you and working with your students on really focusing on having good conversations?
Speaker 4:on really focusing on having good conversations. It's funny that we're talking today because it actually just popped up on my Facebook feed yesterday that eight years ago yesterday I was a part of a team at my last school that did instructional rounds and in a school that was about 85% English language learners, we noticed that kids weren't having a lot of chance to talk and it was a K-6 school, pre-k-6 school. They had chances to raise their hand and answer a teacher's question and maybe there was some chances for kids to turn and talk with a partner, but they weren't getting much more opportunity beyond that to engage in meaningful conversations about their learning. And as a school we decided this was something we felt strongly that we needed to focus on and I jumped right in and then managed to work with we had two math coaches at the time, which was an unusual gift and I worked with them.
Speaker 4:We presented at NCTM and the planning for that presentation was really some of the best professional development in my life, because the three of us would plan lessons around conversations in my classroom. We would co-teach sometimes or I would teach, depending. We recorded, we wrote down transcripts, we kept maps of the conversations, we met again and kind of analyzed what we were seeing and then planned to try something new. And so the weeks of co-planning and analyzing just meant that suddenly my students were engaging in conversations in ways that I hadn't dreamed possible, and I was teaching third graders at the time.
Speaker 4:I remember walking. In one morning we had breakfast in our classrooms, and so the kids some kids are eating breakfast, some have already had breakfast, and I noticed three of them sitting on the carpet with a book, a nonfiction book, and they're reading together and talking, turning and talking about what they're reading, and I thought this is a level of sophistication in a conversation around academic content that I've never seen before. And I knew it came out of all of that work that we had been doing together and it was suddenly like one of the most important things I was going to be doing as a teacher from then on.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. I have a history in my class of going way off topic because something will come up or someone will mention something, or something happens outside on the window and then we have this conversation. So I'm really hoping, fingers crossed, that you're going to give me the thumbs up and permission to keep doing that, because, uh, yeah, that is something that I fall into, but maybe you can give us some tips about, like, how, how do we get to these meaningful conversations? How do we make sure that it's it's rich and engaging and everyone's participating and it's not just me talking about World War II, because it was interesting half an hour ago or something.
Speaker 4:You know how do we make sure that we're getting the most out of these conversations? To it? Because you're clearly interested, which, with elementary kids, the more interested we are, the more interested they're going to be. I feel like sometimes my biggest job is to be an actress and to pretend that I'm really excited about the parts of a plant so that they will be. But it also is that in those kinds of conversations that you're having about whatever just happened outside the window, our classroom overlooks a playground. That happens a lot in our classroom, where we end up with conversations that I certainly wasn't planning on. But you'll start to see the conversation skills kids already have, Even when they come into our schools. In kindergarten and first grade, they're engaging in conversations all the time. So if we can build on those strengths, that's the best way to get our academic conversations to be stronger, instead of just trying to think well, what do I want them to be able to do? Which is, I think, where I started, like, what would an academic conversation look like? Great, how do I teach them to do that?
Speaker 4:But luckily, one of those math coaches I worked with said let's notice a name. And so we began to notice when kids were doing things in a conversation that were really helpful. So it might even be as simple as, after a short conversation, saying hey. I noticed that Christine was really looking at the person who was talking. She was watching and nodding her head and you could tell she was listening, because often listening is one of the hardest things for young kids to do, especially to listen in a really meaningful way. So, noticing and naming those things, the kid that you've noticed goes oh, I did that, I did, I did do that, I can do that again and other kids go. Well, if that kid can do it, so can I. Like it's not me showing that as a teacher I can do this, it's your classmates are doing it, so that's an attainable thing to do. Then becomes, you know, I noticed that Tammy agreed with something that Christine had said and then added onto her thinking oh, she did, yeah, I can do that.
Speaker 4:And we made a board in the room and as we worked on different things like how do you know someone's listening? Well, we noticed in names the kinds of ways people were listening. How did someone introduce a new idea into our conversation? We noticed and named and we just stuck Post-it notes up on the board every time it happened and after a couple of weeks kids would say at the end of a conversation someone would raise their hand and go. So I noticed Amy was listening to me because she asked me this question about what I had said. Oh, here's a post-it note. Go, put that on our board. What a level is it when the kids start to notice a name, that their classmates are doing these things because it's so meaningful to them? So for me that was the easiest step into these conversations, but I also think one of the most powerful, because it took what kids were already doing and just turned it into an academic setting and built on those skills.
Speaker 3:Do you find that this has reduced the amount that you need to talk?
Speaker 4:yes, I'm still not as good at it as I would like to be. I think one of the reasons that I really value talk is that it's something I do a lot of. I come from a chatty family but, yes, I do think that there are lots of times I've noticed. I literally just emailed a parent yesterday to say every time your son raises his hand to respond in a lesson, he doesn't just give an answer, he explains his thinking about that answer. And I think, yeah, more and more of my kids do that because they've been prompted to that, we've modeled that, we've noticed and named when they do that.
Speaker 4:But it does mean that I don't need to keep saying, okay, why did you do that? Or it looks to me like you did that because he's already done it, or she's already done it. And then they say, oh yeah, I agree with that and I want to add on, or I disagree, because I'm noticing this, which means the conversation is moving on without me needing to kind of push it in any direction. So, yeah, I think I still talk too much, but I think they talk a lot more than they used to, and I noticed that when I dropped them at PE or music or art and the teachers go. Your kids talk a lot. I'm like, yeah, that's probably kind of rough in your class but I actually encourage it. So I'm sorry that that makes it harder for you. In the 30 minutes you get them.
Speaker 2:Thinking about the books that you've written and the experiences that you've talked about there. I think you're a perfect person to help us think about how we can get everyone in the room engaged, no matter what their language is, but also when we're in contexts where we have lots of different cultural backgrounds, country backgrounds, religious backgrounds. So how can we make sure that those conversations are inclusive, but still being honest with our opinions and things?
Speaker 4:like that. I teach now at a school that is on a military base, so I have students. I don't have as many language backgrounds as I had in previous schools where my students spoke so many other languages at home, but I do have many different lived experiences. Many of my kids have lived abroad, in different countries, or they've lived in different places in the US with very different cultural norms, and they come in and out a lot. We have a very mobile population, which adds to this challenge, I think, and out a lot. We have a very mobile population, which adds to this challenge, I think, because a big part of being able to really engage in honest conversations is to have a space in which you can do that, and so from the very beginning of the school year, we have to work to really create a community and a space where kids can be honest. And when I first started doing this work I don't know that I was thinking about that piece so much that you just asked about Christine as much as I was thinking about how do I help kids take risks and be okay with being wrong, because we can't engage in a meaningful conversation if people aren't going to be willing to try on new ideas and say things and maybe be like oh, actually, I don't think that anymore, I've changed my mind. And so building a community in which people were willing to take those risks and say like, when someone disagrees with me, that's not like I'm not being attacked because they disagree. We have different thoughts and we can learn from each other. So there's a number of things that I talk about in both books actually towards building that community. I think it's also important to remember that we don't build it in the first few weeks of the year and then it's built. It's something we have to keep reinforcing all year. Um, and especially in a school like mine with a 40% mobility rate, as new kids come in and other kids leave, we have to really help them come in and continue to keep that foundation strong. But we can't engage in an honest conversation if we can't trust each other. And so, building that community, we have morning meetings every day that give us a chance to really get to know each other and to support each other, and at the start of the year we engage in a lot of conversations that are very low risk.
Speaker 4:So just talking about things in our daily lives, I use a lot of the which one doesn't belong, math strategy that has four images and any one of them cannot belong as long as you can give a reason behind it. And I'll start that off with, you know, four movie posters or four puppies, pictures of puppies, things that don't require any content knowledge, but allow us to engage in these conversations and begin to agree and disagree and begin to say my opinion and listen to your opinion. And then, as we get into more difficult conversations and I'm in fourth grade now, which, in Virginia, where I am, means we teach Virginia history, which is very similar to us history, which is kind of nice actually, but definitely gets at a lot of discussions of enslaved people and native and indigenous people, um, in ways that most of my students by fourth grade haven't really had to think about. And so and I have a class full of students who are white, black, latinx, asian, and so they all come in with different thoughts on this and different, you know, different biases built in, as we all do, and so being able to have these conversations and listen to each other can be challenging, and my typically my role in a conversation is to stay on the outside and let the kids talk.
Speaker 4:But when we do have those more, more I don't want to say difficult, but the conversations that can be more difficult, that require more trust, I'm I'm more of an active participant because I'm ready to help model the idea of when someone says something that's clearly upsetting, how do we ask so can you say more about what you mean by that, instead of immediately attacking. And so I see my role as kind of how do we stay curious until, I mean, occasionally it does get to a point where I think, nope, that child needs a conversation, like we have a problem. That's not a problem their peers need to solve. But most of the time, if we stay curious and we ask for more information, kids talk themselves through an understanding to a way that, oh, we've had an issue actually recently.
Speaker 4:I have a young girl in my class who does not believe in God, and she has a lot of friends who are very who religion is very important in their lives, and they spent lunch recently making her feel really bad about herself because she doesn't believe in God. And so we've had to take a step back and kind of explore the way that people have different beliefs and that your belief can be really important to you without meaning that someone else's belief isn't really important to them as well, like that. We each get to have those things and we can respect each other while not having to think the same thing. But it was rough for a bit and these are kids I looped with, like I had some of these students from the beginning of last school year, so I've had them for a year and a half. We've had lots of time to build these relationships in this community and it was still that was one of the more difficult conversations we've had.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's great that you were able to loop with your kids. You could continue that work with them. It's great that you were able to loop with your kids so you could continue that work with them. I think it's really interesting that your school chose the goal of developing conversational skills, because it's usually like we got to get our reading scores up or like get a literacy consultant or whatever, which is, you know, you got to do what you got to do. But what was the response from your staff where, whereas, like, we're going to focus on talking, like talking well, because you know how it can be a little scary for teachers to let go and like broaden what the scope of talking can look like in your classroom? So was everybody like, yeah, let's try this out. Or, you know, and I know, schools are always like you know, some people are like yes, and some people are like no, I'm not doing that. Or like help me, you know. But yeah, I just think it's interesting that it was a goal. So how was that response?
Speaker 4:In hindsight it really is kind of you're right and I don't know that. I thought that at the time we had a principal that we'd only had for maybe a year by the time we were doing these instructional rounds and he had been placed at our school. It was not the typical process in our district of the staff and the community getting input into who. No, we were told this is who's coming, and I will admit to having been really worried about it because of that, but they did so because, again, we had a very high English language learner population. We were in a district of about 200 schools, the second most impacted socioeconomically, so the school with the second most students on free and reduced lunch, and our test scores reflected that, and so they placed him in there to fix things. And our test scores reflected that, and so they placed him in there to fix things. And I will forever have immense respect for him for the fact that he did not come in and immediately put a foot down and tell us. He came in and was curious and spent time figuring out what is working, what isn't working. How do we make sure what we're doing is best practice and not how do we make sure what we're doing is going to pass the test. Sure, what we're doing is best practice and not how do we make sure what we're doing is going to pass the test? And so I think that was a part of the fact that we could make this shift. Then, a year later, after we did these instructional rounds, it also, I think, helped that this came from our staff. I mean, the instructional rounds were led by a company, but it wasn't like they brought in people from central office and had them do our instructional rounds. It was us, it was teachers in our building going in and doing these instructional rounds, and so we were the ones saying this is what we need. And there were definitely teachers who were uncomfortable. And, tammy, I think you got it exactly why.
Speaker 4:It's hard to let go of control when you have a classroom of 20 to 37-year-olds. It's hard to say, like here turn and talk to each other, not knowing where that will lead, not knowing if they'll stay on task, not knowing if that will get them to the goal of what you're hoping they will learn. And it's one of the things that I talk a lot about. We have to trust our kids to be able to do this work. But once you start, I really think you see how quickly you can trust them.
Speaker 4:And then the harder piece of trust is, I think, the trust in ourselves, that trust that when it's challenging or when the conversation goes way off on a tangent that you didn't expect, you have the professional knowledge to bring it back. Whether that's a conversation about believing in God or whether that's a conversation about a math problem that suddenly has become a conversation about video games, that you, as the professional in the room, can get kids back on track or can say we're done right now and we'll come back to this later, like this isn't really the time to be having this conversation. But that trust, both in our students and in ourselves, is a huge part of being able to have kids engage in conversations.
Speaker 2:I love hearing stories about you know leaders doing the right thing and teachers having some agency in what happens in their school. It's always really nice to hear those stories. I'm wondering if there is a role for technology in these classroom discussions. Do you ever see a way that you know, maybe using back channels or any sort of technology to support or enhance these sorts of classroom conversations?
Speaker 4:I definitely have seen it with older students. Since I've been digging deep into this work. I've been in third grade only and now in fourth, and I haven't really done a whole lot with it. I've been in third grade only and now in fourth and I haven't really done a whole lot with it. I've recorded our conversations and sometimes we'll go back as a class and watch. Mostly I'll try to use that with the whole class to show them like, look how well you were doing this, Notice. Because I know sometimes in the middle of something I've had principals come in and observe and point out things to me that I was doing that I didn't notice. So I know my students don't always see that they've done something really well. So if we can go back and watch it and they can say, oh, that's what that looks like and I can do it again Every once in a while with kids who are really struggling in a conversation, usually because they're dominating it I will sometimes have them look at a video and say, like, notice how much other people are not getting a chance to talk.
Speaker 4:How can we help encourage other people and give them the space? But when we were virtual we engaged in conversations and in that time the chat and the mics were kind of two things happening at the same time, which was really interesting, but I haven't tried anything like that in person since we've been back in person. That's really awesome, but I haven't tried anything like that in person since we've been back in person.
Speaker 3:That's really awesome though. That yeah, just that being able to use video as a tool, a constructive tool, to say, hey, let's, let's review this, because it's hard to watch ourselves on video to or listen to ourselves and be like, oh, I do need to let someone else talk a little bit or, you know, change the way I change my tone or something like that. But we are wrapping, getting close to the end of our recording time with you, jen, and we always ask our guests to provide a pared down pointer for our listeners, so it can be something that you mentioned already or something else that you do within your daily habits and routines that you just know you have to share with the listeners.
Speaker 4:This is a thing I love about the work that the two of you are doing, because paring down is such a challenge for me and I think, for many of us, and so the guidance is super helpful.
Speaker 4:And I've been thinking about this and I think the thing that I found myself doing in recent years that has been super helpful is that at the end of a school day, pausing for a few minutes before I leave, I tend to go pretty quickly.
Speaker 4:After the kids go. I'm at a late school and what I found over the years is that by the time I'm done with a seven and a half hour school day, my brain is not in a place to do anything super meaningful anyway, so there's no reason to stay at school. But I have a post-it note that I leave on my desk and I just make a list of the things that throughout the day I thought, oh, I need to, you know, put these out for the kids or I need to remember to hang this up or to make this anchor chart or, and I just jot them down real quick before I leave, because the days that I forget to do that, I come in the next morning and I spend 20 minutes kind of puttering around trying to remember what were those things that felt so important the day before. And if that post-it note is on my desk the minute I walk in, I hit the ground running and I'm better prepared for the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, post-it note to-do lists for the win. Absolutely I agree with you on that one. Thank you so much, jennifer, for joining us today. It's been a great conversation and we've learned a lot about building those academic classroom conversations. Thank you for joining us. Thank you both. I appreciate it. Today's episode was brought to you by plan z, professional learning services, forward thinking, educator support.
Speaker 1:Find out more at plan z, pl servicescom be sure to join tammy and christine and guests for more episodes of the minimalist educator podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with with them at PlanZPLS on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaia Moretti. Thank you.
