Coaching Retrospective: What impact have we had in five years? A little over five years ago, I sat across the table from seven or eight of our school’s senior leadership team to be interviewed for a newly-created position: Teaching and Learning Coach. “Tell us about a time you helped others be reflective.” “What do you think about when you are planning instruction?” The questions weren’t hard to answer, but I had no idea what they thought of my responses. At the time, I really didn’t have a clear concept of what the role of Teaching & Learning Coach would entail or whether I would be a good fit. I went home thinking I had quite possibly embarrassed myself in front of the whole LLT. I guess I did okay in the interview though, because eventually I was offered the role, and became part of a cross-school team. The team has ebbed and flowed a bit over these five years, but one thing has been very consistent: the group of people I’ve been privileged to work with has been amazing. Th
Striving for Equity in my Classroom: Inspired by Cornelius Minor’s Imagination Protocol
I don’t know about you, but I was really inspired by our PD session with Cornelius Minor in January. Somehow he managed to make a three hour Zoom call engaging enough that the time flew by. Somehow he created a culture on that call that invited us to feel comfortable talking openly about topics like our values and beliefs, discord and racism. Somehow he made the work of bringing more equity into our classrooms feel tangible.
Cornelius left us with some work to do at the end of that session, and he gave us a powerful tool to get us started: the Imagination Protocol.
The Imagination Protocol:
- Who is most often left out in my school community? (I know this because of grades, attendance, participation etc.)
- What are they left out of?
- How might I reimagine that thing to give people more access? (Fix injustice, not kids.)
- How might I test my idea?
In this post, I am going to talk about where this Imagination Protocol has led me so far. This post is not a ‘how-to’ kind of post. I am just a beginner at thinking about my teaching through an anti-oppression lens. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that, although I received a copy of Cornelius’ book We Got This two years ago when he was here for our Learning by Design conference, I didn’t really get much past the introduction until recently. I guess I didn’t think racism or other kinds of inequity were much of an issue in International Schools like ours. My perspective has shifted a lot since then
I am very grateful to Mandy, Darren and Rebekah, our colleagues here in the ES who invited us to the Open Forum Social Justice ‘Safe Space’ Roundtable Discussion in June, and gave us the Summer Reading Challenge, with books like So You Want to Talk about Race, White Fragility and King Leopold’s Ghost. By the end of the summer, my thinking was more like: In a world as deeply laden with discrimination as ours, how could we possibly not be affected by it? In a system founded because of colonialism, how could we not be shaped by it? I felt strongly that I want to be part of the solution, but the size of the problem felt overwhelming. What could I possibly do? When I picked up Cornelius’s book again after his visit, I couldn’t put it down. The roadmap to more equitable classrooms that he lays down feels like a road I very much want to travel.
So, why am I writing this post? Well, writing gives me a chance to synthesize my thoughts, and hopefully get some feedback so I can better serve the kids. I am sure that many of you have been engaging with the Imagination Protocol since Cornelius was here, and I'd love to get some conversation going with people I don’t get to see in person very often. Maybe my reflections will get some of you talking to each other about how you are working towards more equity in your own classrooms, or to be re-inspired to try something new.
Imagination Protocol Attempt Number 1: What is life like for language learners in my classroom?
The first time I went through the Imagination Protocol was in a breakout room at our ES Faculty Meeting the week after our session with Cornelius. The kids I was thinking about were the students in my class who are in the Foundational ELD program. One in particular, who was new to ISB in October, was having a difficult transition. I was noticing her habit of hanging back, watching the other kids playing at recess, and choosing to ‘pass’ at Morning Meeting. Despite all our efforts to provide her with lessons at her level of English, and scaffolds to access the curriculum, she looked tired all the time.
Talking with my colleagues, I wondered aloud, “How can we help her integrate more into her new school community?” As I said it, I suddenly had an epiphany: Why does she need to do all the integrating? Can we maybe make our classroom a little bit closer to something she knows? She comes from Korea. I lived in Korea for a while at the beginning of my career. I decided to see if I could make our classroom just a tiny bit more Korean.
The next day, I asked my three Korean students if they knew the game ‘Sam-yuk-gu’. It’s a game I remember playing a lot when I lived there, with students, at parties etc. All three of them knew it well, and we played it together for a few minutes. I asked them if they would like to introduce it to the class at Morning Meeting, and they were keen. It quickly became a class favorite. It was lovely to see the student I was concerned about laughing loudly with her peers.
A few weeks later, it was Lunar New Year. I put a message into the Morning Announcements document in Korean (and one in Chinese for another student). My Korean student shrieked with joy when she saw it. Shrieked. What a beautiful sound.
You will be happy to hear that my student is doing much better. She still tends to watch the other kids play soccer at recess. She tells me she likes watching soccer. She participates every day in Morning Meeting, and chats happily with her table mates during snack time. With her Swedish friend, and her French friend, she has discovered a shared love of anime and K-Pop. In Social Studies, we are doing an investigative report into Fair Trade companies, and she is highly engaged, designing her own research questions and taking copious notes. Do I think that game of Sam-yuk-gu at Morning Meeting caused this shift? Well, no... Part of what our students in Foundational ELD need is just time. But I know that it meant something to her. Her body language, facial expressions and squeals clearly told me so.
Inclusivity in the context of teaching and learning does not simply mean that ‘you are allowed to be present here.’ To be included means ‘we have changed ourselves and our practices to make ‘here’ a place where you can thrive.’
(We Got This, p. 36)
Imagination Protocol Attempt #2: How can data help us see our blind spots?
My second go at using the Imagination Protocol was with my sixth grade colleagues at a series of team meetings. Libby, our fabulous team leader, invited us to think together about our sixth grade students and program. In our first session, an idea came up that we as teachers may have some blind spots, and it would be really helpful to hear from students. We found a school climate survey from Ontario, and used it as inspiration for a survey for our sixth grade students. (Actually, that makes it sound easier than it was. The survey went through multiple rounds of feedback and revisions before we all felt okay with it, but Libby persevered.)
The day we got the data back was coincidentally also the day we looked together at the MAP data. It would have been easy to just have a discussion about all that data, and then move on with all the other things that need our attention: unit and lesson planning, assessing student work, preparing for upcoming Learning Conferences… the list goes on. I lay in bed that night with Cornelius’ words echoing in my head.
After hearing and thinking, we must ask ourselves, ‘Because of what I’ve heard, how can I make active and longstanding adjustments to my classroom community, to my actual teaching, and to how the department, grade, or school operates?’
(We Got This, p. 17)
The next day I spoke with Libby, and she felt the same way: we need to do something to act on this data. We decided to choose three areas from the data to zoom in on, areas where we want to do better:
Quite a few of our students don’t recall ever learning about the experiences or accomplishments of gay or lesbian people or different types of families.
Almost a quarter of our students sometimes feel uncomfortable or unwelcome at school because of their appearance.
According to MAP data, girls did not show as much growth as much as the boys in mathematics & girls are under-represented in the higher attainment bracket.
At our next team meeting, everyone was on board with looking a little deeper. We self-selected into three different groups to do a kind of informal action-research into these three sets of data.
I chose the first one. My group is looking for case studies and texts that we can bring into our upcoming Social Studies and Literacy units, and then we plan to ask the kids for some feedback. Earlier this year, we read Brown Girl Dreaming and Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson, which were a great way to enter into discussions about race, racism and identity. On the survey, the vast majority of kids said they had ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ learned about the accomplishments and experiences of people of other races, cultures or skin colors. I think we can find some good texts and stories to help the kids explore the identities of sexual orientation and gender identities too. Actually, since embarking on this action research project with my colleagues, several ‘teachable moments’ have arisen that have given me an opportunity to give kids access to the kinds of stories that we noticed were missing. Some next steps are to document these into our unit planners so that we can guarantee access for all the kids in the grade level. We also want to get the kids’ feedback later in the school year to see if their perceptions have changed.
The other two groups have some really interesting ideas on how to dig deeper into the issues, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where they go with it.
Imagination Protocol Attempt #3: Who are the children that I worry about?
For my third attempt at the Imagination Protocol, I actually used a slightly different protocol. In We Got This, Cornelius has a thinking protocol called Thinking About the Kids in My Classroom. He describes it as a way to identify any groups that consistently benefit less from the way things are. The first question in the protocol is “Who are the children that I worry about?” (The approach reminded me a bit of an episode of the Brene Brown podcast, in which Dr. Susan David talks about our emotions as useful sign-posts.) Cornelius’ examples of groups he worries about are not based on race or gender; they have names like “The Kids that Never Seem to Get it” and “The Kids that TALK ALL THE TIME.” Do you have students that fit those descriptions? I do. I also have “Kids that are Frequently Wandering around the Room” and “Kids who Interrupt the Lesson with their Attempts to be Funny.” If I’m honest, I do have students who are telling me that they are sometimes disengaged during my lessons.
There is the act of listening itself, more specifically, the hearing. This is the stuff that happens at the actual site of the message being delivered. Sometimes that message is communicated with words that are either spoken or written. Those messages are decently easy for educators like us to receive, but sometimes messages are communicated through behaviors or through silences, and sometimes the messages do not happen in one instance; instead they are communicated across several instances over time.
(We Got This, p. 16)
I found myself thinking a lot about one particular kid. She is a natural leader. She has charisma, style, a lot of respect from her peers. When she buys into a lesson or a project, she dedicates herself and there is no stopping her. When she’s not into it.. Well, let’s just say I’ve got an uphill battle ahead of me.
Part 2 of We Got This has some really good ideas for getting that buy-in from kids. They are big, juicy ideas like showing kids that you hear them and value their feedback, shifting from a punitive to an instructive mindset, and making sure that what you are teaching is transferable to kids’ lives right now (not just in some distant future.) He talks about sharing power with the kids because to hold power over them is basically a type of colonization of their culture with our own.
You know, empathy is a really powerful tool… and any attempt to serve people without truly being empathetic, any attempt to serve people without true understanding is not service, it’s colonization.
(Cornelius Minor, interview on VrainWaves podcast)
Let that one sink in. Yikes. As a white person, of English and Scottish descent, I really don't want to re-create in my classroom the power dynamics of colonialism.
The ideas in Part 2 of We Got This are ideas that resonate personally with me, and align very well with our beliefs as a school:
From ISB’s Continuum of Standards and Supporting Indicators for Faculty
There are some really clear examples of how Cornelius has done this in his classroom, and some graphic organizers to scaffold our own planning. I can see so many ways that I can improve in these areas. To be honest, I feel a little overwhelmed. I want to ask the kids for more feedback. I want to get to know more about what interests them and bring that into our lessons. I want to find authentic contexts and authentic audiences for them. I want to revisit class jobs as a way of sharing power. I want to improve the way I plan for and respond to off task behaviour. I want to put the kids more in the driver’s seat. So many things.
Well, I thought, let’s just start with something small and notice what happens. We were beginning a new unit in Literacy: writing persuasive narratives. I planned a little speech to launch the unit, based on a script in We Got This:
Did this little speech help them buy into the unit? I think it did. They were pretty into the first assignment, and many of them wanted to read their first attempts out loud for feedback. It’s been easier than usual to get the funny kids to rein in their jokes so that we have time to learn and practice more techniques. And my charismatic, sometimes-disengaged kid? Well, she just found out she’s moving. She really wants to get into her chosen school, and she’s been asking me for advice for her interview. I’m doing my best to really listen to her, to enjoy her for who she is, and to bend the curriculum to her needs.
This is how I try to meet all kids. ‘Where is the poetry in this young person?’(We Got This, p. 13)
So, thank you, Cornelius, for giving me this road map to what it can look like when we successfully bend the curriculum to serve our students. And equally, thank you to the kids who always let me know when I’m not quite getting it right.
Takeaways & What’s Next?
My biggest takeaway from experimenting with the Imagination Protocol is that there are lots of ways that we can make our classrooms more equitable when we start by paying attention to the kids who are right in front of us. It can feel so overwhelming to think of the whole system and all the ways it is oppressive. There is important social justice work to be done in schools in terms of curriculum review processes, anti-discriminatory hiring policies, intercultural competence training etc. And also, there are ways we can start the work right now by listening to what the kids are telling us and looking for ways to give more access to those that currently have less.
There is plenty more I want to work on connected with the above. I’m also pushing myself to keep learning. I’m currently taking the course Cultivating Resilient Communities in Times of Crisis, which is helping me explore how our different identity markers impact the way we communicate. I also enjoyed reading Joel Llaban’s article Sustaining Courage this week. The workshop he mentions, TACKLING RACISM: DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN OUR SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES sounds really good. I’m also really looking forward to our next session with Cornelius. In the meantime, I’d love some feedback and input from you.
Do you have ways of honoring the home cultures of your students, and bringing them into the classroom in meaningful ways?
Do you know some good books with gay or lesbian characters or different kinds of families that would resonate with sixth grade readers?
How do you ‘bend the curriculum’ to your students? How do you make sure what you are teaching them can transfer to their lives right now?
Do you see ways that my thinking is misguided? If so, please give me some kind, specific and helpful feedback. I really do want to improve.
Tricia
Works Cited
“Brené with Dr. Susan David on The Dangers of Toxic Positivity, Part 1 of 2.” Brené Brown, 4 Mar. 2021, brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-dr-susan-david-on-the-dangers-of-toxic-positivity-part-1-of-2/.
Cornelius Minor, Ben Kalb. “Vrain Waves: Teaching Conversations with Minds Shaping Education: We Got This with Cornelius Minor on Apple Podcasts.” Apple Podcasts, 4 Mar. 2019, podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-got-this-with-cornelius-minor/id1365316994?i=1000431028356.
DiAngelo, Robin J., and Alex Tatusian. White Fragility. Public Science, 2016.
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost: a Study of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Papermac, 2000.
“It's Time to Give Classroom Jobs Another Try.” Cult of Pedagogy, 8 Feb. 2021, www.cultofpedagogy.com/classroom-jobs/.
Minor, Cornelius, and Kwame Alexander. We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be. Heinemann, 2019.
OLUO, IJEOMA. SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT RACE. BASIC Books, 2020.
“Sustaining Courage.” Council of International Schools, www.cois.org/about-cis/news/post/~board/perspectives-blog/post/sustaining-courage.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. Puffin Books, 2014.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Harbor Me. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2018.
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