Why Your Equity Work Isn’t Closing the Gap with Zaretta Hammond

00:00
Speaker 1
Foreign. 

00:04
Speaker 2
We've poured a lot of resources into equity work for decades. So why are we still getting the same results for black, brown, indigenous and linguistically diverse students? Why? Because we've been fighting Cognition redlining with the wrong weapons. Most districts think equity is about better relationships, high quality materials, or even just efforting, putting in more work and trying harder. But Zaretta Hammond, one of the sharpest minds in education, says we've been unwittingly practicing what she calls Cognition redlining. We're hardwired to underdevelop students Cognition capacity not through malice, but through compliance driven systems that get kids through lessons without ever building their learning power. Think about this. Your personal trainer doesn't do the push ups for you. They coach you. They assess where you're at. They design a program. They help you overcome obstacles. That's what our students need too. 

01:07
Speaker 2
Not over scaffolding and not strategy stripping, but actual Cognition apprenticeship. What's at stake? Every day we confuse getting students through the lesson. We're building powerful learners. We're maintaining the system we claim to disrupt. We're creating play it safe classrooms in a world that desperately needs Ruckus makers. So what does it actually take to become the personal trainer of students? Cognition. How do you help kids turn random information into meaning laden, usable knowledge? Why do so many well intentioned leaders keep falling for seductive shortcuts in dangerous detours? Zaretta Hammond's here to talk about a new book and she's also going to show us where we're going wrong and more importantly, how to get it right. 

01:57
Speaker 2
Hey, I'm Davey Bauer and this is Better Leaders, Better Schools, the original Ruckus cast for visionary leaders who want to do school different even within a traditional system so that we create campus experiences worth showing up for. Thanks to Ruckus makers just like you, this show ranks in the top 1% of nearly 4 million worldwide podcasts. So thanks for pressing play. And once again we'll be back with the main content right after some messages from our show sponsors. For over 30 years, ODP business Solutions has helped schools transform from whiteboards to smart boards. 

02:41
Speaker 1
Why? 

02:42
Speaker 2
Because when you get the right tools, everyone wins. Visit ODP business.com education to revolutionize your school's learning spaces. That's ODP business.com education staffing stability isn't just about filling positions. It's about what makes educators stay frontline. Education's 2026 K12 lens report highlights what districts are doing differently to strengthen retention and long term support. You can download the full [email protected] leaders. That's frontlineducation.com leaders. Over 1 million teachers rely on IXL because it's empowering. It helps them make better decisions with reliable, and it adapts instruction based on student performance. You can get started [email protected] leaders. That's ixl.com leaders. A principal I work with walked into her staff meeting last week with one clear next move on the culture problems she'd been circling for months. She didn't get there alone. She got there with Digital Danny. He's always there, never forgets, and he evolves with you. 

04:14
Speaker 2
Get started with Digital [email protected] Ruckus. That's my principalcoach.com RuckUS. All right. And Zaretta, welcome back to the show. 

04:30
Speaker 1
Thank you. Thank you for having me again. 

04:33
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's really. It's. It's my honor. This is such a privilege for me, you know, just admire your work. And we're here to talk about a new book, Rebuilding Students Learning Power. Right. Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice. So a meaty topic to dig into. And I think, you know, why not just, like, dive right in and say, you know, where. Where is it? Where's schools unintentionally practicing what you call Cognition redlining? And you know, what? What would it take to dismantle it? 

05:05
Speaker 1
That's a really great question to start with. Number one, I tweaked the question a bit because I don't think teachers or leaders are practicing it. I think unwittingly, like, we have across the nation invested multimillions into equity work, particularly since no Child Left Behind. Like, this has been decades, right? Three decades, at least. But I think what has happened is in the service of really talking about the relational part. We've missed the ways in which our education systems have been hardwired to underdevelop the Cognition capacity of historically marginalized students. Black, brown, indigenous, linguistically diverse students. I think we have to shift the focus. So where are districts unwittingly kind of allowing this inequity by design, that shape shift, to keep slipping past kind of our equity firewalls? We're putting, like, people are working hard. I mean, they're bringing this stuff into schools. 

06:15
Speaker 1
And at the classroom level, instructional core is where we don't necessarily see the traction. And so, you know, that, to me, is the real crux of it. Like how with instructional leadership, do we start to see these things that we are unwittingly, unconsciously Feeding not because anybody gets up and says, yeah, we want to go and put some Cognition red lines in place. I've never heard anyone say that. But I do see that we continue to see students not achieving at the level that they should. You know, and then we go towards something like high quality grade level materials, right? High expectations. There are a lot of the jargon and the practices that are designed to be equity focused but still don't disrupt things at the root. 

07:11
Speaker 2
And do you see that the campuses and systems, they sort of confuse that idea of equity and maybe unwittingly again lowering the bar. And you know, how do systems course correct for those type of actions? 

07:25
Speaker 1
I think again, this is one of the reactions in terms of course correction in kind of misreading the landscape. So what we see again, pumping up high quality grade level materials, we should have those. But if your students can't read or they're not good problem solvers or don't have adequate background knowledge or can get to conceptual understanding to just putting grade level materials doesn't give them the skills to do that. So what I see unwittingly is over scaffolding. And you know, that being promoted in pacing guides like let's just. It's really about the content, not about the learner actually becoming more powerful learner. That is number one that I see, right? The turnkey practices, hey, here's the new hot practice out on the street and oh, it's aligned with the science. Science of reading or the science of learning. 

08:25
Speaker 1
We don't really have to understand how it works. We're just going to turn key. Everybody do this strategy. So then we engage in what I call strategy stripping. Like it's not about understanding how and why these work, right. This is what Hattie talks about with visible learning. Why do are there signature pedagogies? Why are there the big four elements you have to be have in place? Because as leaders and educators in the classroom, we have to understand this so that we actually can pivot around the inequity that wants to maintain itself. So those are the ways that I see. Because they unwittingly look benign, right? They look helpful. Let's over, let's get students through the lesson. But getting students through the lesson doesn't build their learning power. It just gets. And then the assessment tells us, oh, we just got them through the lesson. 

09:19
Speaker 1
But they don't have a way to build understanding, right? Or problem solving or they don't have number sense or fluency with, you know, their sound spelling correspondences. So that we know what the learning stuff is. We just don't know how to close the knowing doing gap. 

09:38
Speaker 2
I love language and how people intentionally, you know, use it. For having this podcast, right. Ruckus Makers in the audience, that was an intentional choice and it stuck. And you know, you just talked about powerful learners and learning power. You don't always necessarily hear that put together. But I like how you describe that. Can you, can you give the Ruckus maker who's watching, engaging with this content a little bit of idea of what. 

10:02
Speaker 1
You mean by that? And it's not one that I've made up. So again, the UK is probably about a dozen years ahead of us, about 12 years ahead of us in using the science of learning. But there have been a handful of folks here in the United States who have been championing the science of learning for a while, right? And part of what they talk about is this idea of students actually improving their ability to process information. Marzano started talking about it in 2004 and building background knowledge. You had David Perkins talking about, right, Learning the whole game of learning, right? And so mastering the whole game of learning, you have people talk about learning muscles. And what's different about that is the idea that it. 

10:53
Speaker 1
We recognize that a key factor in getting student achievement up is helping the student actually be able to process information, take content that is new, might feel random and turn it into meaning laden, usable knowledge. Right? And we know what that process is. It's not like, oh, this is new research. This has been around for a long time and this is how anybody learns outside of school. But what we've done is we. The kind of, the infrastructure, the mechanism, the factory kind of orientation towards school prevents us from putting students in the driver's seat. And then what we get is this kind of, you know, misinterpretation of it. Like this seductive shortcut that, oh, we want students to have agency or to be independent learners. 

11:46
Speaker 1
So there's a way in which we just want them to have study skills or to be on task more versus kind of grappling with ideas and building knowledge, because that's how it happens. So I do think there is, you know, space for leaders to learn what the science of learning actually is. Not kind of boil it down to some brain based strategy that now every teacher is going to do that and the teacher's still not talking to the student or looking at the student or coaching the student. In the book, Rebuilding Students Learning Power, I talk about it as teachers need to Become the personal trainers of students. Cognition. Right. Mr. Miyake and the original Karate Kid. Right. Wax on, wax off. Right. Teaching skills. Skills. Teaching moves. And the teacher's not doing the work. The teacher's literally coaching the student. 

12:41
Speaker 1
And what does that mean for how a school building or school district understands, has shared language and shared understanding of what these practices are? 

12:52
Speaker 2
I like that example, you know, especially Mr. Miyagi or trainer was at the gym today and I would love it if my trainer lifted for me. 

13:02
Speaker 1
Right. 

13:02
Speaker 2
But that's. They don't, they don't do that. They don't do that, but they do. 

13:08
Speaker 1
I was just gonna say, you come in and you know, for an assessment because you're going to get started working with a trainer and they say, well, give me five push ups. Right. You could do two and ask for a bucket. And you know, they don't just like, oh, I'm gonna get down there and do that. There's three for you. No, they just like, yeah, all right. 

13:22
Speaker 2
Right. 

13:22
Speaker 1
You want some water? Okay, back at it. And we don't necessarily create, you know, classrooms where they are that kind of dojo for students. They're. They're not in a Cognition apprenticeship and leaders don't quite understand the science of learning yet. To lead, you know, educators in a building toward creating that kind of environment and interaction. 

13:46
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. You know, and it's so helpful. They challenge, they encourage, they help me get more efficient, you know, in the lifts and that kind of thing. And so if that's like how they show up, you know, I'm curious too, like how you might think about if we started to measure sort of like success in our students in terms of their learning power versus test scores, those kind of, you know, traditional, let's call them outcomes. Like what would, what would Ruckus makers stop doing tomorrow if they wanted to make that shift? 

14:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think if they wanted to make that shift, one of the things they would do. I, I'll start with what they should do. What they should be doing is checking students for their grasp of core concepts. Right. This is what we Conceptual understanding. So in the book I talk about the grass score. Right. Isn't getting it right. And that from zero to five, there is a way in which you can actually assess the learning, not necessarily the outcome. Right. Not necessarily the look busyness. So being closer to hearing students talk about their understanding and how they're making the connection. So that's one thing. And I think again, the thing to stop doing is just kind of the pedagogy of compliance. 

15:07
Speaker 1
You're just students through a task and that the task looks busy or that we have students in turn and talk type of conversation. So there's nothing wrong with a turn and talk if people are just sharing. But a turn and talk doesn't develop conceptual understanding. And so knowing just kind of like, oh, what should be happening in the classroom? So I think being able to kind of stop with more of the performative types of strategies or actions we want all teachers to do, you know, give students feedback. But are we making space for having the students use the feedback? Have you taught students how to use feedback? Have they actually looked at their own learning moves? So now I have this feedback and now I need to learn to be more meta strategic, not just metacognitive. Right. 

16:03
Speaker 1
So there's a lot more that needs to actually happen, not just, oh, we'll stop doing that. Chapter five. You know, I talk about some of the things that need to stop happening. Decolonize the classroom is what I call it. So yeah, I lay out some of those things. But I think primarily thinking about what they also need to add into it,. 

16:28
Speaker 2
Is that partly what's going on there with compliance? I guess like in terms of power and control and you know, the. I guess I'm curious, like why a school might default to that sort of. 

16:41
Speaker 1
I think it's the DNA. So we can't look past historically how public schools have been structured. So the degree to which we think we've kind of broken that mold, we really haven't, particularly for the lowest performing students. So for whatever reason we believe that the lower performing the students are, the more they need this control. We need to cajole them, push them, comply them with points or demerits to get through the lesson. We don't ever check for understanding, we don't ever check for their confusions. Right. That's how learning actually happens. And so that is just kind of the DNA. And I think some leaders have yet to understand how that shape shifting may look like. Hey, we have belonging, we really care about our students. We have project based learning. But students have never learned the craftsmanship of learning. 

17:44
Speaker 1
Ron Berger of El Education has talked about this a lot. And again, I think it's a missing ingredient when we're talking about the equity equation. Right. It's not just the curriculum or standards that you literally have to help students learn how to learn. I think that is not something most leaders have gotten any kind of training or grounding in, let alone how to lead that, let alone how to make sure teachers have that knowledge. 

18:16
Speaker 2
What's wild is that we're still talking about that. Because I know when I was in the classroom were talking about that exactly. Like, how do we get, how do we teach? How to learn. Right. Not just the concepts that we're trying to teach, but yeah, going about, you know, I don't know if you call it executive functions or whatever, but again, that trainer sort of mindset to build students up so that they can be independent or work collaboratively, whatever, but do it on their own. Not necessarily like needing me there all the time. 

18:46
Speaker 1
Well, and to be clear, information processing is not the same data function. So I really break that down in chapter two and three, because this is typically the default we go to, right. And function is how to organize your binders. Study skills, time management, all of those are very important, but they are not taking information that is new, novel, random process and turning it into meaning. Making connections with prior knowledge, getting to understanding. No amount of study skills or having an organized binder is going to help you figure out the conceptual understanding of big ideas as they come into the classroom, as they come into the curriculum. And this is typically what standards are going to focus on. Right. Does this understand? But if there's no. Just teaching the events doesn't get it. Just being organized doesn't get it. 

19:48
Speaker 1
And so I do think that is one of the key things that leaders need to understand the difference between information processing and executive function. Both are necessary, but you cannot have deep learning and accelerated learning without improving information processing. 

20:05
Speaker 2
Is it kind of like, you know, the being able to organize and do it on your own, have that skill set and the idea of like making it stick, does that sound right? 

20:17
Speaker 1
But that's good shot because I do think where a lot of leaders are right, I want students to be independent, but you first have to remember they have to be cognitively independent. You have to actually have the skill. Me just leaving you alone telling you to, you know, go ahead and do the task. Students will be dutiful and do the task, but then they still don't understand doing the task doesn't always lead to their understanding. And this is why they need that opportunity to get coaching or to have the right task design so that they are engaging in productive struggle, they're engaging in processing. So I start the book in chapter to actually breaking down what the six core skills and dispositions are that they need. Right. And a lot of these are invisible. Ultimately, as students master those, they actually become more independent. 

21:12
Speaker 1
They don't need the teacher to call the teacher over every 10 minutes because they know how to get themselves out of confusion. They know how to actually make connections, right? So that it's giving them the Cognition skills that are going to lead to that independent Got it. 

21:34
Speaker 2
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22:33
Speaker 2
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23:41
Speaker 2
If you're trying to build a campus where people feel supported, connected, and proud to stay, Download the full K12 lens report and see what's working for districts right now. Go to frontlineducation.com leaders that's frontlineducation.com leaders to get the full report. Something that drove me nuts as a Ruckus maker was hearing teachers say things like I taught it, they should have learned it. But really, some teachers just don't know how to teach. Or reteach for that matter, so that all kids get it. That's where IXL comes in. IXL's diagnostic automatically identifies knowledge gaps for teachers and provides them with a personalized growth Plan for each individual student. Teachers can step into the classroom every day knowing what their students know and what they don't know. IXL's adaptive platform makes differentiating instruction easy. 

24:42
Speaker 2
As students learn, IXL adjusts to the right level of difficulty for each student. Close knowledge gaps and accelerate learning with IXL. Get started [email protected] leaders. That's ixl.com leaders. I was talking with a principal last month who'd been wrestling with the same staff problem for six weeks. Every Monday it was on her list. Every Friday it was still there. She kept telling me she needed more information before she could make the call. Here's what she actually needed. She needed someone to ask her if you already knew the answer, what would the answer be? That question. Cut six weeks of circling down to about four minutes. She made the move that afternoon. And that's the conversation Digital Danny is built for. He's your AI coach, trained on a decade of how I actually work with principals. 

25:46
Speaker 2
And he's available the second you need him to think through something. You can get started with Digital [email protected] Rutkus earlier you talked about seductive shortcuts. And I know that Ruckus makers love to get to action quick. Right? Like, tell me how, Zaretta. And one of the challenges with that is like, how did you know how to do it and do it quickly? Which I think you know, would be a. Would be potentially a problem. And you also talk about dangerous detours. So can you say a little bit more about that in terms of change? 

26:26
Speaker 1
It's so important because out of a really good intention, there is a sense of urgency. And that urgency drives that. Well, let's just do some stuff. So we try to turnkey everything. We're going to actually just make it actionable. Meaning they're strategy stripping. The teachers don't understand the why behind it. They don't know how to modify it in the moment. And they're just doing the same thing over and over like it's a magic wand versus the personal trainer doesn't do that. They assess who's in front of them, what their level of motivation is, what their health background is. They take all this information in and design a program and coach you when you know, get a little off track and like help you overcome whatever the obstacles are. It is an interactive thing. 

27:10
Speaker 1
And I do think this, the kind of seductive shortcuts that's kind of driven by this urgency is really what gets us off track. Right. And so being able to really understand how change happens, I really believe instructional leaders have to be kind of masters of and students of how change happens. This is why chapter four, before I get into kind of the nitty gritty of it all about how change happens, because if you don't understand that change takes a dip before it actually starts to level off and then increase, we improve our first attempts at anything. I call them the first pancake. And we know how that first pancake works. Right. It just is bad. And we don't shut the kitchen down, though. We make adjustments. And so I think in this urgency, leaders are trying to avoid that first pancake. 

28:11
Speaker 1
And you can't if real learning is happening. But when you can set up an inquiry approach amongst adult learners, then, you know, you go slow to go fast. Right? And so the principal, right, you get small to go big. We want to go big and fast. Like, okay, then you want nothing to happen. And you cannot deny that, you know, outcome. So that's the seductive shortcut. The dangerous detour is that it's just, we're just going to talk about relationships or anti racism or like we're over here and we're not even talking about instruction. So that's the dangerous detour that if we all just get along or it's about belonging, right. Or heaven forbid, we think it's just about the student not being motivated or needs to get a growth mindset. Like we've heard all this before. Those are dangerous detours. 

29:04
Speaker 1
They just sidetrack us from talking about the instructional core and instruction and building students learning power. 

29:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, and the piece about change is interesting too. I'd love to hear your thoughts on sort of like the human side of change as well. But that piece, you know, the first pancake, I like that imagery as well. You know, I give that to my dog. But it's okay because then, you know, by the time I make a pancake two and three, I've got a better process. And I think it helps just sort of like reframe. And districts love to talk about, like, hey, let's learn from failure, let's innovate. But they don't really mean it, right? Because when you fail, then you get in trouble. I mean, you get written up and disciplined and that kind of thing. But that, I was gonna say that, to me, that's what the first pancake is like. 

29:54
Speaker 2
You learned what was working and what didn't work and that leads to improvement. That's, you Know, the point I think. 

30:00
Speaker 1
To piggyback on that point is the reason that they abandon it is they go try to go big too quickly. So what I always suggest, and it's really hard for leaders. You start with a small band of sparks in your school and it's like, well, we, every teacher needs this or we need like you haven't even figured out where the pitfalls are. You haven't figured, you haven't done your first pancake. Let your first pancake be small so you can make adjustments, you can build capacity and then you can bring more in. So think about the rollout being concentric over, you know, 18 months versus this year, everybody's going to do this strategy and none of it takes hold. And on top of that you got nine other initiatives that the teachers need to do, right? 

30:50
Speaker 1
And so now we got, you know, initiative overload and teachers are not getting any real training in depth to actually learn how to correct the, you know, small glitches in that first pancake as they implement something. So I, this is the biggest challenge I do see amongst leaders is you get small to go big and you go slow to go fast. Many of them just want to go fast and try to do it big. We're going to scale it everywhere all at once. That is for doing nothing. 

31:24
Speaker 2
For sure. It's counterintuitive, but it works. I mean, even in business. Like, I have an idea and you want it to scale and impact a lot of people. And the path forward is find the first three to five people, right? That'll dance with you and make it happen. And coaching leaders, right? It's so easy. I think it's sort of natural human psychology to look at, this teacher, this teacher, they don't get it. How do I convince them? And to your point, right, I think you called it sparks. But you know, I'm like, well, who's already bought in? You know, start there, it's easy, you. 

31:58
Speaker 1
Know, and then learn because it's almost like going to Costco, Sam's club, whatever the big box store is, right? How do you go in to get paper towels and you come out with paper towels and a five pound bag of Polish sausages. How did that happen? Well, it happened because some marketer in there knows how change happens, how you get people to lean in. So there's the lady with the little toothpick, you know, sample. And then all the people are crowded around and you're like, what's happening over there? So you wander over there and then you say, oh, well, everybody else, like, okay, I'm gonna. And now you. Oh, my God, this is delicious. And she says, right next to this little, you know, sample stand is a whole, you know, frozen food case full of these Polish sausage. 

32:51
Speaker 1
So you just grab it's convenient, it's doable, you get quick wins. But you're also able to sample it because that's a small bite, right? Tiny, expensive experiments. So we don't use any of what we know about change. And. And let's actually talk about the human side of change for leaders. There's a great book out. It's. It's oldie but a goodie by Robin Evans. It's called the Human side of School Change. And what he talks about is the reason some teachers resist is they might be feeling grief over giving a way of doing things, even though we know it may not be for the children, it's a habit. Is something they. How do you help them get through their grief? For others, they think any kind of change is maybe a comment on their capacity. So now they're you. 

33:41
Speaker 1
You're calling me incompetent or you're micromanaging. Like, there are all these. And what he's done is actually said, well, there's six typical responses. And it's back to the relational piece. If you cannot manage people and read fairly quickly, what are they experiencing emotionally? You can't help them move to the other side of that. And just what we do is we go in with just a totally technical approach. And we've known for a long time about adaptive change, that it's both relational and technical, but you still have to know about how change happens. That's why I wrote a chapter that's like, we're not. We're going to talk about instruction through this book, but let's talk about change in the liminal space. Right? There's a liminal space. You aspire to one area to be in one place. 

34:31
Speaker 1
You are at this current lower level and there's a little gulf in between. That's the liminal space. I liken it to a trapeze artists, right? You know, we've all been to the circus, hopefully back in the day, where you've seen the trapeze artist let go of one bar and for a few seconds they're hanging in air before they grab the other. 

34:52
Speaker 2
Right. 

34:52
Speaker 1
It looks right. But that's what a liminal space is. You're not quite who you used to be. You're not quite where you want to be. But if leaders can help people stay in that space because it brings that feelings of uncertainty. Right. It feels like there's no footing. And if we do not help them manage that, people will go back to something that even if it wasn't productive. Right. And so that is a skill set that leaders have to have in terms of change. 

35:23
Speaker 2
Right. 

35:23
Speaker 1
And we have a tendency not to lean into that kind of adaptive process of understanding the human side of school change. 

35:33
Speaker 2
Right. Is that what's going on? A little bit too. And when you know, you're introducing productive struggle to the classroom and things are happening with students and it's getting a little uncomfortable and it's like, okay, I'm going to jump back in. Or just, you know, why do adults like respond the way they do when students are a bit uncomfortable right. In the classroom? 

35:57
Speaker 1
Well, just like leaders have to hold that space where teachers are in uncertainty, in that liminal space. Teachers haven't learned how to help students, how to hold that space for students. They're still being driven by urgency. They're still being driven by who the principal might walk in. Now, the research says teachers spend 95 plus percent of their time by themselves. But teachers will tell you, I can't do that because like, how many times honestly has the principal walked through your classroom? Really? So they're saying they don't know how to hold that space for students. So that students who already think me looking, me being intellectually vulnerable is confirmation of low intelligence. So this is, you have to have a counter narrative. 

36:47
Speaker 1
So in the book I talk about, you have to set up a culture of errors before you want students to engage in productive struggle. If you haven't set that up, you haven't set them up to say it is okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are data. Right. And you teach students how to do that. So now it's okay. Now the reality is most of us know this in our own lives anyway, like, oh, I made that new recipe, didn't taste quite like, oh, here's what I'll do different next time. Like I said, nobody shuts the kitchen down. But we have a tendency to quickly abandon any new practice or you know, configuration of an environment because we have this sense of urgency, not understanding how to get the student to kind of lean in without penalizing them or making them compliant. 

37:39
Speaker 2
I'm happy to look a fool because I know in, in that sense I'm always learning something, right? So, but it, I don't know if I was pre made that way. Or if it's a skill that I learned over the years, I can't remember. 

37:52
Speaker 1
It's a little combo, right? A little nurture, a little nature. I think you have to be able to first have a sense of self. You also have to understand how learning happens. Right. Kathleen Cushman in her book Fires in the Mind, where she actually takes 100 students on this practice project how to get students to lean into their learning. And she starts by asking them, what did you get good at? And how did you get good? Right? And then what they slowly unpack is the role errors or mistakes or multiple trials played. How did you feel about that? And what it turns out is if the environment was around some other status point, the student just kind of clammed up. Environment was conducive. 

38:41
Speaker 1
You know, skateboarders out there in a group kind of doing their jump and somebody's going to hit their butt, you know, and nobody's laughing at them. It's like, oh, man, you stayed up three seconds longer than the last, you know, so now this is how learning happens. But when we get in the classroom, students are discouraged from using those natural ways they learn. So the nurture and the nature part are about, do you actually resist the way schooling. Right. Joel Medic calls this the grammar of schooling. It is designed to shut you down so you actually become more passive and compliant as you move through higher grades. 

39:23
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's wild. I'm taking guitar lessons. You know, were talking about improv earlier, but I'm taking guitar lessons again. And I bought, you know, my joke is that I know how to play songs and chords, and I did that, you know, to meet girls, Right, of course. And date in date, because otherwise, at that it wasn't going to happen. But I'm taking. I'm taking guitar lessons and learn sort of the classical style, right. Which is totally different, you know, than. Than just playing like a. Chords and that kind of thing. And in the beginning really hurt, you know, it was so painful because talking to the, you know, my teacher and he's like, well, your brain knows and you have good taste of what it should sound like. And the body's just not willing yet. 

40:10
Speaker 2
But it hasn't taken long, you know, maybe 90 days, a little more than that. And I, I wouldn't say I'm not like concert ready and certainly not a pro, but I am way better, right. I can remember at day zero what I was like in that it's, you know, the way I describe it, a middle school concert, you Know where you're. You're sitting there and being nice. And you. And he. And he would say, it sounds good. I'd be like, ben, no, it doesn't sound good. This sucks. It's really bad. 

40:35
Speaker 1
Middle schooler, right? Yeah. 

40:37
Speaker 2
Maybe one day. 

40:38
Speaker 1
What's so important is two things are working in your brain. And this is again, why leaders also have to understand the science of learning. One, our brain has a progress principal, meaning it knows this, it does this gap analysis. This is how it's supposed to sound. This is how you currently sound. And how do I get better? Is about onboarding to the process. That's the beginning where I'm just learning the cores. I'm allowing my brain to be in some confusion about this, but I'm being metacognitive. Like, oh, okay, I know I need to get my hands. And then you kind of get a little muscle memory. Next you're going to go to actually being meta strategic to sound better. I'm going to need to move this finger. 

41:23
Speaker 1
And this is where your coach is at position to say, I see you doing that thing because you don't want any better. You know, like, I keep doing it. And he's saying, no, you're really not doing it. So in schools, this is where videotape, I ask my teachers sometimes audiotape. Right. You think that's what you're doing, but is that what you're really doing? So you need to be able to get another perspective. And so that process leads from metacognition to metastrategic. Metastrategic is. I know how it should sound. So I'm going to make these changes in my hand positioning. And I'm going to try this one first. Oh, that didn't do it. Okay, I'll try changing this. So it's the small adjustments. We talk about it as deliberate practice as well. 

42:08
Speaker 1
Like, I know here are three options of what I could do to maybe change this tone. So the progress principal, our brain gets excited, releases dopamine when we get a little better. Right. We're not where we used to be. We got a long way to go. But look at you. You could actually do the middle school. People are going to say, it actually sounds like it might be music. I think all of these things are what the science of learning has at its core. That I think actually augments instructional leadership. And see, instructional leadership is not instructional management. And right now we have a lot of instructional management. Are you doing the thing? We're all going to do it. We got a pacing Guide, that's management. That's. The personal trainer is not managing you. 

42:58
Speaker 1
The personal trainer is trying to give you skills and capacities so that outside of the hour, we're together, you will incorporate this into your life. You're going to do your cardio, you're going to find opportunities for more walking in zone two. You're going to do some strength training, right? You're going to do all these things on your own and they're coaching you to transform, be meta, strategic about what needs adjusting. That's what we have to bring to actually outwit the shape shifter that is in equity by design. 

43:33
Speaker 2
Well, rebuilding students, learning power. Ruckus Maker approves. So we want everybody to pick this up for sure. Get it for your staff. Right? That would be a huge win. So much, so much to chew on in the process here in the book. Are there any other big ideas before we go that I might have missed in questions that you want to make sure? 

43:51
Speaker 1
I think the book really covers a lot and it's not just theory, it's practice. I heard someone who was doing a Impromptu review on LinkedIn in their own post unsolicited said, this is a book not just to be read but to be used. And I wrote it that well. Pretty dense. It's not a quick read because it is a manual. Right. And so being able. Here is it. Here it is. Right. Just it's thick. That's really what I want folks to do. Go slow, you know, get small, try some tiny experiments with it. Not strategy strip, but really think about how you help adult learners manage and navigate change. That really is about becoming the personal trainer of students. Cognitive development. 

44:38
Speaker 2
Brilliant. Where I'd like to close. You've answered this question before, but I'm sure you'll have a new saying. If you could put one message on all school marquees around the world for a single day, what would your message be today? 

44:52
Speaker 1
Well, my message is only the learner learns, right? And so we remember when were in schools that it is students who are positioned to be the active actors. And that information is not transformation would be right under it. 

45:09
Speaker 2
Hey, Ruckus makers, thanks again for pressing play. I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I enjoyed creating it for you. And before you go, if today's episode shifted something in you so that you want to do school different, or maybe you have a new idea about how to reimagine education on your campus, then check out my principal Coach. It's your AI powered leadership mentor. It's trained on 10 years of mastermind and private coaching experience that I've had. It's like having a world class Ruckus maker mentor in your pocket 24 7. You can start your free seven day [email protected]. 

  Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/