The Minimalist Educator Podcast
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 055: Season 3 Highlights
Ever wondered how you can streamline your teaching methods and maximize productivity? This final episode of Season 3 on the Minimalist Educator Podcast is your go-to guide! We’ve compiled the most impactful "Pair Down Pointers" from our brilliant guests, starting with Jennifer Orr’s practical end-of-day task hack from episode 45, to Naomi Church and Sarah Decotis advocacy for fewer, more effective online instructional programs from episode 56. And don’t miss the sage advice from Peter DeWitt and Mike Nelson in episode 42 on the transformative power of finding a good collaborator in educational leadership.
But that's not all—this episode also features a treasure trove of insights and reflections from various thought leaders. From Amanda Kunalaba’s discussion on the role of arts integration in vocabulary building in episode 51, to David Hayerly’s exploration of thinking maps from episode 48, there’s something to inspire every educator. You’ll also hear from Dr. Sheldon Eakins on addressing implicit bias in episode 52, Lindsay Prendergast and Piper Lee on collaborative reading and resilience in episode 46, and Chris Fenning’s strategies for effective communication and post-training accountability in episode 44. Whether you’re looking to enhance your lesson plans, promote equity, or improve your communication skills, this episode is packed with valuable tips and strategies to elevate your teaching journey.
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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-Bornemann and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to everybody for our final episode of Season 3. In our final episode of each season, we like to create a highlights compilation in which we share all of our fabulous guests' Pair Down Pointers. It's a great episode with lots of quick strategies that will help you get organized and minimize and do strategically less. We hope you enjoy hearing all of these tips from our guests. Our first Pair Down Pointer comes to us today from episode 45.
Speaker 3:We had a great chat with Jennifer Orr, all about classroom discussions.
Speaker 3:This is a thing I love about the work that the two of you are doing, because pairing down is down is such a challenge for me and I think, for many of us, and so the guidance is super helpful.
Speaker 3: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 3: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 put these out for the kids or I need to remember to hang this up or to make this anchor chart, 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.
Speaker 2:I hit the ground running and I'm better prepared for the day Up next, we bring you a highlight from episode 56, where we had an amazing chat with Naomi Church and Sarah Dakotas. We talked about striving for simplicity when using online programs talked about striving for simplicity when using online programs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think really it comes down to less is more for the pare down pointer right, choose less instructional online programs to use in your school and district, ensure that they're based in efficacy and that you have an implementation plan to ensure that they're based in efficacy and that you have an implementation plan to ensure that they're successful. And it's going to be a whole lot easier to look into the background and implement fewer programs than it is to try to do that, certainly with 1,400 on average.
Speaker 5:I would also add that once you have the program and you've made a good decision and you feel good about it, it's important to make room for change right, make room for implementation, and so people are generally comfortable with the status quo, and introducing any new program or methodology can be met with some skepticism or pushback, and this is a very real context.
Speaker 5:And so this is where we should really leverage implementation science, which is a structured approach to help ensure that initiatives are thoughtfully planned and executed, and essentially, it's just the difference between letting something happen or making something happen, difference between letting something happen or making something happen.
Speaker 5:So one critical step to that is looking at your existing programs and deciding what to de-implement, which involves identifying and removing existing practices that might not be working, that might not be backed by research, that you haven't had any success in, and this step creates the space and the room for lasting change that you're trying to make in your classroom, in your school, in your district, and it allows initiatives to be more effectively integrated. And then, you know, ensuring the fidelity of implementation. That's another crucial aspect, and this involves scaling the program through comprehensive professional development, like Naomi stated earlier, as well as ongoing supports for educators. Your professional learning plan should never be a one like touch and go. You want to have a plan to scale and sustain, and so you want to have a plan for those teachers that need ongoing support, and it should look different for every teacher and it should look different for every teacher.
Speaker 2:The following highlight is from episode 42, which featured a fantastic discussion with Peter DeWitt and Mike Nelson about intentional leadership.
Speaker 6:I'm going to give Mike some pairing time so I'm going to use the word pair. You know what Collaborate Find to me find somebody that you can collaborate with. I have had a real luxury over the past 10 years of doing the work that I've been able to do around books and, you know, working with some pretty amazing people like John Hattie and Jenny Donohue. I was doing it alone too, right, I was running workshops and I was working and partnering with organizations, but not in the way that I've been able to do over the past few years, especially with what I started doing with Mike, with the Instructional Leadership Network. But the past year and a half, just alone, from writing the book together, when you find a good partner and collaborator to work with, and when you find a good partner and collaborator to work with, you start.
Speaker 6:I kind of had the. I kind of had the aha moment of going oh, this is what this is supposed to feel like. So find somebody to collaborate with because it can truly and I don't want to embarrass them, but it can truly change so much about your perspective and about your inspiration to do the work. So I guess my pairing conversation would be when you're going to pair up with somebody, find a really good collaborator, because it can be life changing. No pressure, mike, you don't have to tell me whatsoever, you can just skip right past it. You don't have to tell me whatsoever, you can just skip right past it.
Speaker 7:Peter's been great to work with. As you can probably see in our relationship, it's pretty easy to work with somebody so brilliant and I often stand in awe, so the protocol's kind of named after him. I guess, How's that? Peter Was that good, that was perfect, yeah.
Speaker 8:All right.
Speaker 7:I'm going to end with my one of my. It is my favorite quote, and the secret to success is to stay in love, and it's John Stanford. He was a army general and then he was superintendent in seattle public schools and he just talked about keeping that inner fire in, in what you're passionate about, going um all the time. And when you have that, everything becomes easy. I don't know how else to describe it, but there's something that um, it doesn't mean I don't know if that's a minimalist point of view, but it's just this, just it becomes. You know, some hard stuff becomes easier. So secret to success is to stay in love, always, keep, ignite that passion. And for us it's education, student learning, staff learning.
Speaker 2:Our next highlight comes from episode 49, in which we had a captivating conversation with Sybil Hall about her book Burn Bright, not Out.
Speaker 9:My pare-down pointer is don't forget about your digital life. We need to declutter our digital lives too, because they are where we spend a lot of time and they can give us a lot of stress and take a lot of our cognitive load. That feels messy if your desktop's messy, if your inbox is messy, whatever it is. So what I like to do is once a month I schedule into my Google Calendar I just put it on the last Friday of the month, whatever you wanna do, and that's digital declutter time. And then when I get to that date I decide, oh, it's email cleanup, oh it's downloads folder cleanup, it doesn't really matter, but at least once a month I'm cleaning up my digital life a little bit too, and that relieves cognitive load and it brings down that calm also when you get to your screen and needing to do something.
Speaker 2:Let's turn our attention to episode 54 for a highlight that includes an engaging talk with Lisa Fort about science and education.
Speaker 8:I think I might bring it right back around to the start of the conversation, where you flattered me with my organization, and I think that's the big thing is that when you do find things that work or have a system where all the material like for me for science, all the material for that goes into one place so that when I need it I just pull out that bin or that piece, I think that's a big, big piece of the puzzle. If you don't have that, then you're scrounging and you're like what can I pull together? And then I think from that that organization piece goes as well, just with how do you organize your classroom? You know, I have my stations up from day one, my agree disagree posters up and day one, and usually students are like what are all those for? And I'm like you'll see, it's all. You know.
Speaker 8:We're going to be doing lab activities and you're going to move between those lab activities because we can't all do the exact same thing at the same time, because I don't have enough material. But it's knowing that all that material is in one bin, all eight stations come out at the same time, and I think that's the big thing that really helps me in terms of just looking at content and prioritizing, as just staying organized with stuff and knowing exactly where it is Exactly. Yes, yeah, time and sanity. Just keep it in the bin.
Speaker 4:Pins are wonderful.
Speaker 8:Yes, yeah, absolutely. You don't have to go out and buy a label maker.
Speaker 2:Those little white sticky notes for masking tape with a Sharpie work just great, exactly, exactly now let's dive into episode 43, where we had a remarkable discussion with mihoko cheetah about tackling burnout in our roles as leaders in education so I know so many people who have to-do lists right, we all have to do this.
Speaker 10:I'm a big planner person I am, you know, and but my tip would be for the to-do list. So I would sit down every Sunday, write down all the things that you know. I think that needed to be done that week, knowing that it would double by the time I got to work on Monday, but it was one of the things. My trick is to sort of have filter questions around your to-do list. So once you've created your to-do list, look at it and say, okay, what are things I can outsource to other people? There's a reason why I have someone do my taxes and give me financial advice, because I've outsourced that task to a professional and so there's lots of ways to do that. And then the second question I'd always ask and this is better for your teams is you know, do I have to be the person? Do I grow? Is it best if I grow, if I do the task? So you know we talk about in our classrooms like whoever's doing it is learning it. And you know, if a teacher comes to me and says, oh, I'm looking to find some more articles about you know reading fluency in early years and I'll say, oh, I have a few articles. I'll, like you know, definitely look, I'll send them to you later, and it doesn't take me long to dig through my article bank and send it to them. But I realized, okay, that's not really not just, not only is that a task for me, but that could be meaning, more meaningful, if I say respond with like, oh, you know what, I know, so, and so is really great, really interested in that, and why don't you talk to them? I'm happy to cover your next. You know duty and you got maybe you guys can chat, because I know you guys don't get a chance to chat very often because you've got different schedules, and then they can start a conversation and then they can start to research and learn more. So it's building.
Speaker 10:So it's like two birds with one stone. Not only is it, it's not a task that I have to do, but it's an opportunity for something better to happen, where it's not just a task that I just check off my list, but it's got more meaningful purpose behind it and it does add to my list too, because then I follow up and I have to. You know I go oh, how was that conversation? Was that enough information? Is there something you want to do with this information? So it's not doesn't completely eliminate things off of my to-do list, but I would. I would encourage everybody to look at their to-do lists with a few filter questions. Another one of my filter questions I always do is what impacts learning the most? What impacts kids? Those are usually the things I get done first. So I think if you have a list of questions and you filter your to-do list, it does help you plan better and be more meaningful with the work.
Speaker 2:Our upcoming highlight is from episode 51, showcasing a wonderful conversation with Amanda Kunalaba about arts and education.
Speaker 11:So I want to bring it back to that vocabulary, arts integration and the arts in schools can be a really massive big thing, but the basic starting point, get your foot in the door. But the basic starting point, get your foot in the door. The most important foundational, fundamental thing about it is vocabulary and finding vocabulary that overlaps with whatever else it is you're teaching and then teaching the art vocabulary words and you can do so much with just that.
Speaker 2:The next segment we have is from episode 48, featuring a great discussion with David Hayerly all about the use of thinking maps in education.
Speaker 12:If I were to say there was one representation that was key in the work that I've done, and I think we've seen it in classrooms and in the US and around the world is that what I mentioned earlier, the frame which we just I mean it's so simple. You draw a frame around any map or it could be around anything that you've created a drawing or an idea or some pre-writing and that frame, that simple rectangle, is like the picture we look through. The picture frame. It's and our own peripheral vision and our own perception. And the question, basically, is what's influencing how you're thinking about this? What's your frame of reference? Where'd you get these ideas?
Speaker 12:And I think in these sort of politically charged times, even that simple frame can be a metacognitive frame, that sort of rethink. Just a minute, where did this come from? Are these really my ideas? What are the values that are influencing how I'm perceiving? So, a simple rectangle and just you know, think of the rectangle which is our computer screen or our handheld screen. That is a frame that is framing our perception. So I would just go with that. That's about as pared down as you can get a rectangle right.
Speaker 2:Next up, let's revisit episode 52 for a memorable highlight, including a great conversation with Dr Sheldon Eakins about getting started and taking action with equity with Dr Sheldon Eakins about getting started and taking action with equity.
Speaker 13:Yeah, I always say start with yourself In order to recognize that there needs to be changes made. You need to recognize that there needs to be changes made. Start with your inner work. Anytime I do a series of workshops and trainings, I typically try to start with implicit bias work. I do not believe that you can end bias. I'm a full-time consultant. I do this work all the time.
Speaker 13:Guess what I have? Bias? It doesn't make us bad people. It's part of human nature. It's who we are. But we need to at least try to recognize those things and that's the first place to start is recognizing what bias do I hold.
Speaker 13:And so what are some areas for growth? There's always room for growth. I don't care how long I mean. Again, as an example myself, I do this all the time. I can always learn more because, at the end of the day, there's things that I will never experience. I will not know what it's like to feel gender discrimination. Or I don't worry about walking down the street in dark or getting ready for the camera and I have to put makeup on in order to be camera ready. I don't have to think about those types of things. So what biases do I hold as a male, maybe as an educated male, english as my first language? What are some areas that I am already good, that I don't necessarily have to think about? But if I'm not open to these conversations, if I'm just being defensive and I'm not prepared to have these kinds of conversations, then what good is that going to do, not just for myself and my own personal growth and professional growth, but also for the students that I'm serving?
Speaker 2:The following segment is from episode 46, showcasing an excellent conversation with Lindsay Prendergast and Piper Lee, all about their book Habits of Resilient Educators.
Speaker 14:Yeah, I would say the paradigm is really that we are better together and that this book was intended to be read with a partner, not in isolation, and so we would welcome our listeners to find a thinking partner, a book buddy, and we also have a book study that's for free on the Corwin website that we wrote so that people can do this collectively, and so really the message is we see you and we value the educators that are working so hard and we are here for you.
Speaker 2:For our final Pair Down Pointer. We're thrilled to share a highlight from episode 44 with Chris Fenning. We had an engaging conversation with Chris about communication and ways to make learning stick.
Speaker 15:If you work. So here's one for anyone who is in learning, training and development you can't afford to ignore what happens after trainees leave the room. So even if you do one small thing, make sure you do one small thing. Accountability Buddies is a really easy example. So to pare it down, do one thing in your training to help make it stick afterwards, and pick something simple for you and simple for the trainees.
Speaker 2:So there you have it. There are all our pare down pointers from our guest experts from season three of the Minimalist Educator podcast. We really hope you got something valuable out of listening back through our highlights. If you want to hear more from our wonderful guests, please make sure to check out those previous episodes.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening and we'll see you back for season four 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 them at plan zPLS on Twitter or Instagram no-transcript.
