Where is the Teacher? 12 Shifts for a Student Centered Classroom

Where is the Teacher? 12 Shifts for a Student Centered Classroom

Ready to ditch the old school playbook and blaze a new trail in education? If so, you’re in the right place. I’m Danny Bauer, and this is better leaders, better schools, the podcast for Ruckus Makers reshaping the future of learning. This is your go to podcast to learn how to challenge the status quo and unleash the full potential on your campus. And in today’s show, I spoke with my friend Kyle Wagner. He’s the founder and co learning experience designer for Transform Educational Consulting Limited, an organization that empowers forward thinking schools and educators to create globally, socially, and emotionally aware citizens through project based experiences and twelve shifts for student centered environments. 

Kyle fell in love with project based learning as a teacher at high Tech High, where he witnessed students publish best selling books, create their own social enterprises, and even influence policy change through real world projects. He has taken this passion global, founding micro schools, authoring two books, and helping over 1000 educators develop 1000 plus transformative learning experiences and the student centered environments to support them. He’s here to discuss his second and new book, where is the Teacher? The twelve shifts for student centered environments in today’s conversation, we cover a number of topics, some of them being the twelve shifts of student centered classrooms. We dig into inquiry, collaboration, and motivation, how this book is built differently, you don’t have to read it cover to cover, and how you can interact with it. We also talk about why high tech high is so successful, and it’s great if you want to emulate it, but you don’t have to do it that way to be a great school. Once again, thanks for listening and we’ll be right back after a quick message from our show sponsors. Hey Ruckus Maker, I’ll make this quick. If you’re listening to this message right now, you’re missing out. When you subscribe to the Ruckus Maker newsletter on Substack, you get access to micro books focused on how to do school, different tools and other resources that will help you make a ruckus and do school different stories and case studies of the worlds most legendary Ruckus Makers of all time. Access to my calendar to schedule coaching sessions, and you’ll also get bonus podcast content that won’t be released on the main podcast feed and podcast episodes without any advertisements. So if you love this show, if it’s helped you grow and you want access to more tools and resources that will help you make a ruckus and do school differently and become a paid subscriber at Ruckus [email protected].. As a principal with so much to do, you might be thinking constantly, where do I even start? It’s a good question, and that’s why I created a twelve month principal checklist just for you. When you download it for free, you’re going to get a twelve month checklist that identifies general tasks that every campus will want to do each month.
But the checklist also includes space where you can write campus specific items and two opportunities to reflect on what worked and what you want to continue doing and what didn’t work and what you want to change or improve. When you take action on this checklist for a year, you will have built a leadership playbook for your school and you won’t have to reinvent the wheel or feel like a first year principal all over again. Go to betterleadersbetterschools.com principal checklist to download for free right now IXL is a go to support for classroom teachers because its adaptive platform makes differentiated instruction easy. See for yourself and get started today at ixl.com/leaders, an instructional coach in every teacher’s pocket. That’s what we’re creating at TeachfX. Teachers record audio of a lesson, and then they receive an AI powered report with instructional insights such as how much are my students talking? How much am I talking? How can I use wait time or questioning to create space for my students to learn out loud? Learn how Teach FX could help your teachers get students talking. Visit teachfx.com/ruckus. When you work with quest food management services, you’re gonna feel good about the food you serve your students. That’s because the food is real and it’s made from scratch and locally sourced. Learn more about quest food management [email protected] or follow Quest food on social media. That’s questfms.com dot. My friend Kyle, welcome to the show. 

05:58
Kyle
Thank you for having me. 

06:00
Danny
This is sweet because you are a friend and we’ve known each other for quite a bit now, and so this is just an honor to be here with you. Also, fun fact for the listener, we have the same birthday, July 6. And this is airing at the end of our birthday month, July 31. August 1 is sort of another birthday for you. It’s the birthday of your second book. Where is the teacher? The twelve shifts for student centered environments. We are going to dig into the book, talk about some of the ideas, hopefully. Your appetite. To grab it. But there’s no greater birthday gift to me and Kyle than to make sure you pick up a copy of where is the teacher? Kyle, what a great title. Why don’t we just start there? Because I think it’s sort of a compelling, provocative image, too. You’ve been putting stuff out on social media. I’ve seen that. I love the COVID too. And Ruckus Makers reject the premise. I think they’re going to love the book for that reason. And traditional schools have traditional teachers that stand in the front and lecture the entire time. You might even say the class is about them. They’re a little mini celebrity in the school yearbook. Sort of takes a different take wherever the teacher is. Tell us a bit about how you got the idea from that, Jeff. 

07:37
Kyle
You just mentioned a mini celebrity. It depends on the teacher, right? Not all teachers are the extroverted type that likes to be in the front and be the storyteller. But I know I was when I first started teaching, hey, you’re in the front of the classroom. You got a bunch of kids sitting looking at you. And I was a history teacher. I would tell compelling stories. I thought about history. I get the kids doing skits and stuff. So it was active to a certain extent. But at the end of the day, if someone walks into the classroom, they can clearly tell who’s a teacher. Because it’s generally me kind of standing up in the front. The kids might be doing stuff, but I was definitely that authority figure in the room. And that’s what I thought teaching was about until I went to high tech high, which was only 2 miles down the road, and someone said, you gotta check this out. And I couldn’t find adults. It was very hard to find adults, actually. Kids greeted me at the door, showed me the space, showed me some of the work that they’re working on. And when I did finally find an adult, they were kind of in the background. They’re supporting this team that was trying to figure out how the Egyptians built the pyramid with the simple machines. And they spilled out in the hallway, and they’re pulling this cylinder shaped stone up the ramp. And I might be embellishing the story, of course, right. But I swear they high fived their teacher, who was a facilitator, who then came in at the most opportune time and said, good work, boys. we did it. And they go, thanks, Mister Mark. And I’m like, whoa, they call him by his first name, too. And they called me by my first name, too. So it just changed. It changed what I thought about teaching because I kind of thought it was like, okay, you come up with some really cool stories to engage students. But, like, there’s a difference between engagement and empowerment, I think when it’s hard to find a teacher and the kids are just kind of managing and owning the learning, you see empowerment. And so that’s why I kind of came up with the idea of where is the teacher? Because it really was hard in that environment. And I think I’ve been in Montessori environments and others where it is hard to find the teacher because teaching now in today’s age, especially with AI and everything else in the scene, comes in multiple forms. 

09:38
Danny
You mentioned and you touched on it briefly, but I’d like you to dig in a little bit more. So you mentioned engagement, which is a very good thing, but that’s different from empowerment, which is also a very good thing, maybe even better. Can you riff on that a bit too, go a few levels deeper? 

09:55
Kyle
I don’t know if you look up the official definitions that this matches it, but I think of engagement as students leaning forward, listening, and they always talk about how do we engage our students? And it’s usually some kind of teacher trick or turning your lecture into some kind of story or adding some kind of flashy visuals to your PowerPoint. Now, you have a smart board, but you’re still kind of, you’re not empowering them. They’re engaged, they’re listening, they’re tuning in. But empowering them, I think, means them taking charge of their learning, where they’re able to address their question. They’re able to connect the content you’re teaching to their lives. They’re actually creating work and being active and doing things that are of value.
So, like what I described about those kids that I saw, their interest was simple machines when it came to Egypt. Now, the content that the teacher had to teach was Egypt in general. And of course, he could have talked about all the different inventions and everything else. And can you imagine how the Egyptians built the pyramids without the kind of modern technology we have now? And that would have engaged students, but that empowered them by actually discovering for themselves. And that was around their interests. And there are other questions that students were taking up related to things that they’re interested in. And that’s the difference for me, empowerment is like you’re taking the learning and you’re doing something with it. 

11:14
Danny
Would you say that your experience there at high tech high was the catalyst for the work that you do these days? 

11:21
Kyle
I would say for a lot of people too, seeing is believing. And I think you, as much as you read about it, you hear about it, you have to see some of these places to really believe it. So that was a catalyst into saying, okay, I know this kind of thing, this does exist and it can exist. What are the conditions for creating these kinds of environments? Which is where the whole twelve shifts kind of took root. Because I was a teacher there at high tech high school and it was tough. And I think anyone who’s listening to this realizes that kind of magic that I just described is not something that just happens because you decide to make one change. It’s like it’s really years of refining and really believing that students can take ownership of their learning. 

12:04
Kyle
And that shift model came in because I did get that job at high tech high, that much coveted job finally. And I wanted to create that kind of magic, but I realized there were really a lot of things I needed to do, mindsets, I needed a shift. I think also too, in the way in which I structured learning and scaffold learning for students. I supported them with their own interests. I had to be mentored as well. You’re my mentor now and I think you have to, it takes a while to get there. But high tech, I definitely was the catalyst and that kind of the shifts in the classroom. I’m so grateful initially for the founder who came into my classroom because I said, look, I do want to create this kind of magic, but I feel like I’m struggling to do it. And he really gave me something concrete to look at as to some shifts to focus on. 

12:55
Danny
That mentorship’s key and they have that environment. I wonder too, before you even get to the twelve shifts, if the first shit, like maybe shift zero is just committing that it’s possible. 

13:05
Kyle
Totally, totally. And I think that mentioning that it’s possible is the first shift you have to look at before you get really. You don’t want to miss the forest for the trees. And the forest really is like, yes, it’s possible for me not to stand in front of the classroom, for me to just be at the side of somewhere else and kids can learn. And I think one of the first steps is to get rid of the big clunky teacher desk at the front of the room. That might be your very first step right before you even look at a shift model, just to say, and I. 

13:39
Danny
Remember the director of the school redesign of the environment. 

13:43
Kyle
The redesign environment. The director came in, he said like Kyle, he’s like, kids are kind of squeezing into their desk space. And I’ve got this big desk at the front and he’s like, you know Kyle well that we got a small room like that desk in the front. Like, is it really necessary? And that just that question alone was like, rock my world. Cause it’s like I never thought about that. I always thought that the teacher’s supposed to have this desk and just shifting that and taking that away makes it a powerful dynamic signal in your classroom, in that environment. Like that’s one of the first things you can look at as you mentioned. 

14:17
Danny
And when I say ‘Ruckus Makers do school different’, this is what I mean. When I say there’s making shifts from old traditional and broken ways of educating to new, different, creative. Challenging the status quo. Not everything’s bad, but it’s just saying with a critical eye, a critical lens, questioning everything. What’s the point? What’s the purpose? What’s it for? Including everything from a teacher’s desk? So here you are sharing that story and it’s pretty cool when I think like aspiring Ruckus Makers,I want to make these twelve shifts in terms of student centered learning. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges that they face? 

15:05
Kyle
Well, the biggest challenge, this is one of the first things when I ever share this presentation because we got to address those and I put a picture of kids high fiving you as you leave visual. I shared it with you at the beginning. With the kids high fiving, I think that’s the expectation that is magically going to happen. But the barriers, there are a lot of barriers and I think it’s just the way in which school has been set up. So it depends on where you’re at. One of the barriers is your curriculum. If you have a pacing guide, if you have a certain spot, you’re supposed to be in a textbook, if you have exams, if you don’t have time to plan these deeper kinds of experiences or reset up your environment and you’re really, I remember for myself I have my lunch breaks. I’d scarf down my lunch at the first school I was at. I had 30 minutes, and I’d be stressed about  scarfing down fast enough for that next class that was coming in right after lunch. You know where they’re gonna be. It’s afternoon time. They’re going to be all wired. I’m going to be a little bit tired in the morning. I think there definitely are these kinds of obstacles and challenges to making these shifts. But I do also think that regardless of whatever school or situation you’re in, for the most part, we have a little bit of control of our classrooms. Probably a lot more, I would say, than some jobs or you’ve got a boss breathing down your neck and you might be micromanaged. But I think we’ve got to just realize that we do have some sphere of control and to just pick one particular area, one particular change that you want to make to just give students a little bit more ownership. Everybody that I’ve spoken to or stories that I’ve gathered says you can’t stop once you start, I think because it’s what we all enter the profession for. I don’t think any teacher entered the profession because they wanted to stand up and lecture a bunch of kids. There are a couple who are few, but those, they get weeded out pretty quickly. Most of us want to empower young people. Most of us want to see young people that spark in their eyes when they realize that they can do something, they can learn something, understand something. And so I think once you start, you can’t stop. It’s the same reason why I went to project based learning initially. It’s like it just does something to you to really align to your mission as to why you became an educator. And some people leave, unfortunately, the profession before they can realize that fully. But for those who do stick around and who see a student sharing, standing up in front of either peers, adults sharing what they’ve learned or sharing something they’ve made or sharing something they’ve created or a breakthrough that they’ve made or an understanding. And you have somehow set up the experience and environment to allow for that. As an educator, that’s what I mean, it’s very hard to go back to traditional ways. 

18:01
Danny
Let’s touch on some of these shifts and at least get one in before the break and cover some after the break. So let’s start with inquiry. What’s the shift there? 

18:12
Kyle
The idea is most learning starts with questions, right. And who’s doing that questioning? Is the teacher doing the questioning? And teachers will ask questions sometimes. They might be going over the pythagorean theorem and be like, okay, how do we solve for this variable? So there’s questions happening all the time, but when I’m talking about inquiry, I’m talking about deeper kinds of questions, more open ended types of questions and the questions that students might have related to our curriculum. So I’ll give you an example. There was a teacher who called it her most dreaded standard. She taught ancient civilizations, and I don’t know why because I’m a history teacher and I love ancient civilizations, but she said these were her most dreaded standards. And she did a simple thing. She kind of turned those standards over to a student. What do you do? She sent a form out, Google form. What do you kind of want to learn about when it comes to this civilization? And the bigger question wasn’t around one particular civilization. The bigger question came around, kids wanted to really know about technology and advancements. Some wanted to know about, like, daily life or fashion or beauty. And kids had different questions related to these civilizations. So she said, okay, let’s kind of formulate a big question. And it was the advancements of past civilizations and what effect they’ve had on modern day society. And she was still able to teach those standards in terms of how these ancient civilizations formed. What was the importance of some of these technological developments? And so those lessons and stuff, she was still able to teach. But then kids were able to take their own personal inquiries and take it a step farther. And they were able to then formulate these teams around these shared kinds of questions that they had. She supported them in what kind of products they were going to produce. And they had this museum where they just put together what the ancient civilizations might look like today in modern society. Parents came. They got to talk to students. Some would share about using sustainable products that they used in the past for cosmetics. To some of these advancements in terms of the simple machines we mentioned, the idea of how potentially they built the pyramids or how they viewed the afterlife. 

The kids who were into religion could do myths so it was like just giving inquiry was driving this experience rather than the lessons from the textbooks. So she was still able to get to those important lessons or those standards that she had around civilizations or advancement, how they’re able to form. But then to approach it from a more inquiry framework, it was driven by. 

20:55
Danny
The students, and they still got to what they needed to get to. But maybe there was some more ownership, right. And empowerment there because the kids did drive it. Is that fair to say? 

21:05
Kyle
Exactly. I tell people, look, there’s a point for inquiry for all of us. Some can, it could be more structured in terms of your approach. So you’re kind of guiding them through these different inquiries and questions that you might have to get to support their deeper understanding. And some are just completely open. But like I say, with inquiry, it’s like when you take your dog off the leash for the first time and you haven’t trained them to be off the leash, they’re going to run off. But if you’ve gone through that process of like, okay you’re going to walk beside me first. We’re going to make sure that when the traffic comes, you’re not going to freak out, then you slowly give them more opportunities where they can really formulate their own inquiries. They know what kind of interests are, they know how to ask deeper questions. And that’s something that the teacher can support as a facilitator moving from that front of the classroom role. 

22:04
Danny
I mean, during our discussion, we’ll pause here just for a moment to get some messages in from our sponsors. Then when we come back, we’ll talk about collaboration, motivation, and interestingly, why you don’t have to read a book, wear the teacher cover to cover and how some people might approach it. As a school leader, time is your greatest resource and there is a real sense of urgency when it comes to getting students what they need right now. That’s why I love the IXL universal screener. In 20 minutes or less, you can identify students in need of intervention. And IXl’s adaptive platform makes differentiating instruction easy. As students learn, IXL adjusts to the right level of difficulty for each individual kid. Get started [email protected]/Leaders. In post pandemic classrooms, student talk is crucial. 

And when classrooms come alive with conversation, teachers and students both thrive. TeachFX helps teachers make it happen. The Teach FX instructional coaching app provides insights into student talk, effective questions, and classroom conversation quality. TeachFX professional development complements the app and empowers teachers with best practices for generating meaningful student discourse. Teachers using Teach FX increase their student talk by an average of 40%. Imagine that, 40% more ownership over the class by students. Ruckus Makers compilot teach effects with their teachers. Visit teachfx.com/betterleaders to learn how.For some students, the meal or two you serve them, that’s gonna be it. That’s what they get for the day. Which means we’ve got to get this right. Quest Food Management Services elevates the student dining experience, serving scratch made meals using high quality ingredients that are sourced locally and responsibly. 

24:22
Danny
Now, you might be thinking, okay, Danny, I get it, the food’s high quality, but do the students eat it and enjoy it? Bottom line, students love the food. Quest is one of the fastest growing companies in the school food service industry and has been consistently ranked in the top 50 food service providers by food Management magazine. Learn more about Quest food management [email protected] or follow questfood on social media. That’s questfms.com dot right? And we’re back with Kyle Wagner. His second book, where is the Teacher? The twelve shifts for the student centered environment are out tomorrow. And again, a great birthday present. 

25:08
Kyle
Way better than most of my birthdays. 

25:10
Danny
Go out and grab a copy. Honestly, if you do consider yourself a Ruckus Maker who wants to do school different and make those shifts from old and traditional, broken ways of educating to new, different, creative. This is a manual for that. And the best thing is, it’s something then that you should consider grabbing for your teachers too. Because there might be some shifts that they want to experiment with. And together we can create an environment where this is happening more and more. Because actually before we get to collaboration and motivation, we talked about how tradition and pacing guides and things like that are some of the challenges of creating schools that are truly student centered and living out these twelve shifts. But do you have any other insight in terms of a challenge of like, why don’t we see more high tech, high type campuses coast to coast, at least in the states or around the world? 

26:09
Kyle
There’s a lot. First of all, parents, I think parents too have to buy in, have to demand something like this. It’s hard because we remember back to how we were educated. And I think most of us have a few experiences that really stand out in our mind that were more like this, but it’s not necessarily the norm. It’s a summer camp, it’s a week off the timetable or something like that. But most of the things we remember is a teacher standing in the classroom. So I think it’s a lot of parenting that becomes another challenge. You’re going to see learning is going to look a little bit different when you come into the classroom. It doesn’t mean they’re not learning. Maybe they’re not getting homework sent home every single night with worksheets, but that’s okay. Like they’re going to want to talk to you about what they’re learning and they’re going to share that when we have this presentation. I think it’s the way teachers collaborate too. I mean, we’re kind of siloed for the most part. I mean, high tech high you had a partner teacher you plan some of these experiences with and you had allocated time to be able to do that. You had shared office space. But most of the way schools are set up is I close my classroom door and I’m pretty much shut off from the world. 

27:29
Danny
In my domain. Actually I have one more question to get to before collaboration because I don’t want to paint a picture for the Ruckus Maker. Like high tech high is the absolute ideal.  I say a lot of times when it comes to doing school difference shifts, like it might be going from traditional rows to collaborative learning centers. You might create a high tech high or you might buy an old amusement park and turn it into a learning center. There’s all sorts of stuff. It’s a continuum and there’s many different ways that you can do it. Do you have any stories of people making one of your twelve shifts? Like on a more micro level so it doesn’t feel like, okay, you have to go Hollywood with it. Like it’s like, what’s the next step? What’s the next smallest step that you can take? 

28:19
Kyle
I’m glad you addressed that because one of the first questions I get when any school approaches me and says either A,we want to do project based learning or B, we just want our classrooms to be more student centered. Usually what they tell me because they’ve heard about high tech highs to say, just so we know we’re not going to be a high tech high. And they look at me and they expect me to be like, wow, too bad you gotta be that you got to go in. I say, that’s completely fine. And they kind of take this like a breath of relief. And they’re like oh, okay, now we can chat. I mean several schools are making these minor changes and that’s just simply taking rows and moving them into group kind of tables. That shift alone is going to make the conversation more of, they’re already facing kind of each other, right. And so that makes it already more conducive for a student to student kind of conversation. There’s this one teacher who went through this, the whole twelve shift program. And what I do is I tell teachers, I say, look, that’s why you don’t have to read this book end to end. I say focus on one or two shifts you want to make. And one independent collaborative was this shift that this teacher wanted to make. And he’s a math teacher, he’s not going to be necessarily disrupting this entire curriculum, making everything. These student inquiries are a big question. So he has this content he has to cover, but the shift he made is he moved the tables into groups and he says look, we’re going to have peer to peer teaching and peer experts on some of this content. He knew he was able to chat with some of the students who understood some of the higher level math content he was teaching. He said here are the lessons and stuff coming up. Would you feel comfortable if I gave you some of the resources and shared how to do these things?
Then all of a sudden now you have groups of tables, you have students set up in these little stations teaching these particular lessons that he has to deliver anyways, but he’s not doing it from the front of the classroom and asking a kid with a marker to come to the front of the classroom and do the math problem. Now all of a sudden you’ve got these little stations where they’re teaching these concepts. Kids are able to go where they need most support and of course you’re still covering the same kind of material, but now you’re covering a much more dynamic way. You’re setting up students to actually help support you in some of the teaching. I would take it a step further too, if for some of these classrooms, if you have the resources, ability, whiteboards are quite powerful. But sometimes the whiteboard just sits at the front of the classroom. Have some of these movable whiteboards, these portable places, and you set these up at these little tables and suddenly that peer who is teaching the concept of teaching the equation or teaching how to graph data, whatever it is, it’s visible. It’s visible for the others to see. If you don’t want to. So that’s what this particular teacher did. He said test scores went up dramatically as a result of this. And it’s not just test scores. 

I think it’s too, in terms of an empowerment that those peers felt to be able to teach their fellow peers and also to now, all of a sudden, you don’t have the embarrassment of four or five kids who are really struggling with the concept, who don’t want to, like be put on blasts in front of the whole class, who are able to ask more questions related to things that they’re not understanding. I mean, that’s one way to do it. 

31:55
Danny
That’s an outcome that many school leaders care about, including Ruckus Makers. Test scores, that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, too, it’s thinking about, what are we really teaching kids? Were they really learning? Is it really meaningful in creating these environments where they can sort of. It can be messy at times, they can figure it out. They have to deal with conflict. Okay. Or they learn leadership and asking questions and all this kind of stuff, especially in collaborative little pods you just, you’re creating an environment for that. So that’s really cool. Actually hit on the shift. They’re moving from independent to collaborative, which is great. I want to highlight for the Ruckus Maker listening, because you might not have heard it, but Kyle briefly mentioned talking to a teacher saying, you don’t have to read the book cover to cover. And can you just make it explicit? Like, why is that? Because it’s a cool aspect of the book, right. It’s great. If you read it cover to cover, maybe you want to understand all twelve shifts, but why is it not built that way? 

33:01
Kyle
Good question. I don’t know if you’re writing a piece of fiction, then you do want to read it cover to cover, right. You want to know what happens with a character next and I think my first book was more of a cover to cover type of thing, and it was sharing my story in terms of, and then offering implications for what you might. You might do in your situation. But I realized that was limiting, and the reason why I didn’t want to make this kind of a cover to cover is because that’s one story and that’s one journey that you might be taking. I wanted this to share lots of journey and share lots of stories of what teachers are doing all across the world in public, private, charter, homeschool, all kind of environments to make students, to really empower students, to take ownership of the learning, and to move from a teacher led to student centered environment, because I think every teacher is looking for a little bit of themselves in these stories, and what can I really latch onto? So that’s why. And each shift is a compilation of stories. And you could read a chapter, definitely from the beginning to the end.  Because it kind of paints a picture of, what are we talking about? Let’s visualize it from an actual case study. Let’s share other ways other schools are doing this. Let’s ask some provocative questions of you and give you some strategies to do that, and then go do it. Because the problem is some people read these things cover to cover, and they’re like, they’re so inspirational. Where do I start now? And this is like, no, you’ve got this. Each chapter, 15 pages, is a starting point for you. And here’s some ideas. Here’s some stories from classrooms that might be similar, environments might be similar. Go do it. Reflect on it.  Like, either you want to advance more on that particular shift or you want to choose a new one. So it’s kind of like it’s. It’s in bite sizes. That’s why it’s not really a cover to cover type of book. I think it’s more empowering, especially for a busy teacher who doesn’t just want to do a summer reading and inspire them, but, like, wants to actually take action on some of these things. 

35:08
Danny
Got it. Let’s talk about one more shift, and I think a good one to end with it has to do with the idea of motivation. I think it’s really important because I see a lot of posts on social media from principals about disappointment, frustration with students, or not even coming to school. They come to school totally distracted and not engaged, let alone empowered. Sometimes what I tell them is, well, it sounds like your curriculum is pretty boring and you’re not asking them to do anything interesting number one, and maybe meeting them where they’re at. But that’s coming from me. What would you say to that? Like, because I think it motivates this shift. It’s really important and fundamental for a student’s success, school success. So we gotta figure this out. 

36:05
Kyle
There you go. And that’s a. That’s asking a really deeper question.  Is it motivation?  Because people are, like, looking at attendance and these other kinds of things, and they’re trying to just nip it in the bud. Like, maybe we need a more firm kind of policy. Maybe they don’t graduate if they don’t attend this amount of classes, or maybe their grades are gonna get lowered. But lo and behold, a lot of these things aren’t working and we have to look at the underlying. What’s the underlying issue? How do we motivate kids to come to school? How do we motivate kids to do work? And there’s a lot of theories about motivation, and I’ve read many. Daniel Pink talks about it in Drive, and he talks about motivation. He talks about this idea of mastery of materials. Autonomy talks about that as well. So I’ve been digging into the research. I look at the self determination theory, and it turns out there’s these three major components. And I just did a talk about this here in Hong Kong and asked people, I said, try to guess what these three components are as I share this story.  I’ll share a story, and you try to guess what the three components are, because this particular school that I’m going to talk about in San Diego had the same kind of issue. And I’m not saying they’ve solved their attendance, their behavior problems. All schools are going to have that. But this classroom did, and they hit on these three components. What they did is the American Dream was part of the content, and the great Gatsby was on the curriculum. And if you’re a high school teacher, especially in the states you probably understand this. The great Gatsby had no connection to these kids. They’re southeast San Diego. This is a very, at one point, a very dangerous part of the city, and they’re in one of the most dangerous parts of the city. This is why this particular charter school has started, is to try to kind of give these kids hope to have a different pathway to increase college attendance. And they’re doing well. But during COVID and especially afterwards, we’ve all seen these behavior issues. She decided something revolutionary, different. Instead of just teaching the Great Gatsby and having the kids write book reports, she said, how can we internalize this? What’s this idea of the American dream? Is the American dream still alive? Is it real? And what does it look like in our own community for people to pursue the American dream? And she just changed things a little. Bit around. They still read the Great Gatsby. But then they started to look at the comparison of the lives for people in the Great Gatsby, the people in their own community. They wanted to feature the lives of people in their community. What does the American dream look like if it’s not that rags to riches story? They looked at people who had started YMCAS in the area, small businesses that had been around forever that had never got featured, and people who worked at that school themselves, the custodian, the janitors, they featured their stories, and they interviewed them. They asked them about the American dream and what brought them there. They learned about their community. And it gives me goosebumps telling this, because, she said, the classroom absolutely came to life. They put together these podcasts. There’s a story featured on each of these. Next door, they were still writing essays around the American dream and comparing and contrasting it to what? But they took it a step farther, even when they were done with this, she said the kids wanted to make this YouTube channel or YouTube video. And she said, okay, well, what do you want to do? Well, we want to shoot it like this and add committees that were in charge of, like, the different parts of the podcast production. One kid, she found out, actually had a podcast herself and a bunch of followers. Imagine that. Big, like, big YouTube TikTok sensation. And it connected her in the classroom next door. 

It connected the kids with their immediate community. Attendance rates increased, engagement increased.  I’m sharing that story. Three factors. Competence, autonomy, relatedness. There was competence that was required for them to put this thing together. They weren’t asked just to write a report or something. They need a high level of confidence to be able to put this podcast together. Autonomy, in terms of the stories that they told and who they featured, relatedness, it related to them. It related to their life, and it was a community endeavor that they took on, and it had relevance and real world implications. So those are the three factors. If we can get those factors and ask kids to do work that allows for those things, then I think we can make those shifts. We’ll start to see a decrease in behavior issues and increased attendance and more empowerment of students. 

40:32
Danny
That’s an inspiring story. It reminds me a lot of, like, humans in New York on Instagram, but there’s just so much you don’t know people’s stories. There’s so much wisdom there and just the human experience tapping into that versus just quotes, just reading some, like, old dusty book and saying, do a book report versus what’s this book about? Still reading it, but what’s, like, themes and then connecting that to your life today. That is really inspiring. And I could see why the students were more engaged and attendance rates were up. And these are all things that we would want right in school. So appreciate you sharing that one quick note, too, before the final few questions that I asked all my guests. I’ve been talking about the Ruckus Maker club, and there’s still time to join. It closes for membership at the end of the month in August, but Kyle and I were jamming a bit before we hit record on the podcast. He’s agreed he’s gonna come do a workshop right on the twelve shifts and talk to community members about how it’s possible within your school. I’ll buy some books to give away as a thank you. Then if other members again, great birthday present for Kyle and myself. Go pick up where the teacher is? But I’ll be giving some away too. And so if you haven’t joined the Ruckus Maker club, check that out as well.  Kyle, thank you. I wanna ask you the last few questions that I asked all my guests. 

42:04
Danny
It’s been a while since you’ve been on the show, but I know you’re gonna do great with these. So if you could put one message on all school marquees around the world for a single day, what do you think your message would be to those communities? 

42:19
Kyle
I think it’s related to this whole idea of student empowerment. And I’m trying to frame it in a positive way because I used to say that marquee might get out of their way, but I don’t know. I mean, it’s pretty bold, and I think it kind of represents, really, my mood for, like, the most powerful teaching. So I guess get out of their way or step back and let them step up. That might be it. And then they could take it any kind of way you want. But I guess that’s kind of, like bigger than smaller and how do you get to that? How do you get that place that allows for that? 

42:57
Danny
If you’re building your dream school. The Wagner campus. What? And you weren’t limited by any sort of, like, budget constraints, your only limitation was your ability to imagine what would be the three guiding principles. Building this dream school. 

43:15
Kyle
The three guiding principles. Oh, okay. It needs to be very much experiential learning by doing, right might be one. I mean, that was my kind of college motto. Community has got to be in there. Community empowerment of some sort. I’m all about student empowerment, but it’s more important when it’s for the community. Community as classroom might be one. So learn by doing community as our classroom and fun. It’d be fun. That would be a big principle. It should be fun. You might be asking, probably asking another question, but I want to just shout out for you in terms of what you have done for me. So anyone who’s listening to this, which is a lot of people, this whole framework, this was a concept like way, way back when a high tech high. But like you, Danny, helped turn this concept into something that actually had legs, could grow, you helped nourish it and water it and make it fertile. I would never have thought I could write a book on this. So you help plant that seed. You help plant the seed as to what it might look like, this simple kind of form to model, because I know that you’ve been working hard on that. So anybody who has not joined the Ruckus Maker club or is a Ruckus Maker or is like in Danny’s Sphere and you’re just listening to his podcast, you’re doing yourself a great, disservice. You’re doing a self disservice by listening, but you’re doing a disservice by not, by basically not getting everything you can out of your questions. I think your provocations,in your way to coach and support people. So that’s a big shout out for you and I hope other people take you up on the ruckus mayor club. 

44:59
Danny
Honored. You mentioned it. I say ideas are great, but not the greatest and the only thing greater than ideas taking action right within something like the Ruckus Maker club. And the reason why that was created was because I know that there’s a lot of free content out there and inexpensive books and then a more expensive mastermind and really expensive advising and private coaching and stuff. And so the club fills a gap where we can serve Ruckus Makers at scale, help them do school differently, and it’s really a no brainer. Like personally, many people, not all, but most, right, can afford it. And if you are in circumstances where it’s still out of reach, just email me, because I’ve worked with people on mastermind memberships before. 

I don’t publicize that, but people have told me their story, and I’m like, okay, well, hey, let’s make it work for you. And now they’re in there. So part of me doesn’t publicize it because it’s like, how bad do you want it? You should be asking for those things, in my view. So, anyways, let’s finish this up. We covered a lot of ground. I love this book. Where’s the teacher? I’m so excited that it’s gonna be out. Can’t wait to have my copy, you know? And hopefully I could get you to autograph it when you’re stateside again. So everything we discussed, what’s the one thing you want a Ruckus Maker to remember? 

46:20
Kyle
Something. Stick with it. Education is it. I still have dreams, and some of them are. Some of them are the greatest dreams I’ve had, and some of them are absolute nightmares. And as an educator, we know how hard this work is, and maybe that doesn’t mean sticking with it means you’re in a classroom. Maybe sticking with it means you’re doing something Danny and myself are, and you’re supporting people in other ways. But just stick with your vision. The reason why you entered one of the toughest but most rewarding professions on earth, and be true to those principles, and it’s going to look different. We have many ways in which it could look different. Explore those ways to look different and get outside yourself and find a community, find a tribe, find other people, because they’re out there. 

And if you got beaten down so much, you’re ready to leave. I understand that. And nobody’s faulting you for it, but there are, like, there is a tribe out there that think and act like you do. 

47:29
Danny
Thanks for listening to the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast, Ruckus Maker. How would you like to lead with confidence, swap exhaustion for energy, turn your critics into cheerleaders and so much more? The Ruckus Maker Mastermind is a world class leadership program designed for growth minded school leaders just like you. Go to betterleadersbetterschools.com mastermind, learn more about our program, and fill out the application. We’ll be in touch within 48 hours to talk about how we can help you be even more effective. And by the way, we have cohorts that are diverse and mixed up. We also have cohorts just for women in leadership and a BIPOC only cohort as well. When you’re ready to level up, go to betterleadersbetterschools.com mastermind and fill out the application. Thanks again for listening to the show. Bye for now and go make a ruckus.