Know thyself: The power of a reflective educator

As educators, we teach the students we believe they are. But if we don’t know who we are as teachers, how do we know who our students are? Dr. Vanessa Rodriguez, co-author of the book “The Teaching Brain,” talks about how teachers can become better educators by being more keenly aware of how their personal beliefs and traits affect how they see students and approach the learning process. If teachers are never taught to explore those lenses, they are missing who their students truly are. By understanding three sides of themselves -- private, public and perceived - teachers can build  relationships that help students thrive. Vanessa reminds us that teachers are learners too and cautions that the education community’s focus on student-centered learning  ignores crucial components of the learning process - that learning is an interaction. 

This podcast is produced by NarayanKripa Sundararajan (@KripaSundar) as part of the Course of Mind project, an ISTE initiative made possible in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What do you think about when you think about your teaching? If someone asked you to describe the most recent lesson you've taught or you've seen Todd, what would you talk about and telling that story? What do you find yourself describing your students, your teaching, the interactions or the context that led to the whole thing happening? Maybe you talk about yourself, maybe you'd like to, but you'd stop yourself because as a teacher, we're not supposed to talk about ourselves. If we asked you to fill in this sentence, my classroom is blank centered. Yes. You'd know you're supposed to say student centered, right? Or are you? Hi, I'm Shana white and I'm Zac Chase and you're listening to course of mind, the learning sciences podcast for misty. In this episode we talk to Dr. Vanessa Rodriguez, assistant professor at Nyu and member of the center for Early Childhood Health and development with the Department of population health and coauthor of the book. The teaching brain. Yes, Dr. Rodriguez. What kinds of awareness research suggests teachers should bring with them into the classroom? What she told us turn the idea of student centeredness on its ear and suggested our schools and systems would do well to start noticing the fact teachers are people too.

Speaker 2: 1:21

She also helped us understand five key awarenesses educators can bring into their practice as they think through what is happening in their classrooms. Curious to find out how you can tell a fuller story of what happened the last time you taught us to welcome. Of course of mind.

Speaker 1: 1:52

We're trying to come think about how we can use the research that goes on and I think you are probably aware that there's a lot of great research around learning and education that doesn't necessarily make it into the classroom or that that doesn't necessarily get translated into practical uses for teachers and so we were hoping you could help us think through a problem here. Previous episode we talked a lot about how teachers can set some tone for safety so that the brain is ready to learn at the very beginning of of a school day. And so we were hoping you could help us think through what are some practical ways that teachers can be aware of student needs, uh, as they're going through through a class period or going through a school year. What are some, what are some pieces that you've found as as being successful? So this is a, I think this is a super tricky question, um, because the best thing that teachers can actually do to be aware of learner needs is to be aware of who they are. And so I know that sounds a little bit odd because I think as teachers we're used to practicing a student centered

Speaker 3: 2:59

model. Um, and what I am basically arguing, uh, both of my research and my work with universities and schools and teachers is that the more aware you are of yourself as a teacher, the better you can actually set up, um, a support system for the children in your classroom.

Speaker 1: 3:20

When you say aware of yourself, do you mean in kind of aware when you're hungry, aware of, you know, you had a bad day or there's a spot on your tie or what kind of awareness or you're talking about

Speaker 3: 3:31

when we think of self as a teacher and so this is specific to you being a teacher, right? There are actually three cells that we have recognized, uh, in our data that have emerged over the years. And that's that a teacher has a private self and that is what is just private to you. Maybe no one other than you knows that would include your own needs. That can be income needs, emotional needs, physical needs. It would include your identity, that could be your race, ethnicity, culture or gender. Um, and it also includes your, your values and your experiences, which might be why you got into teaching. What brought you there, what do you think the purpose of that role is? Yeah. Then there's the public self. Um, and that's the recognition that you are on display as a teacher and that you can both be authentic but have a different self that's on display, ah, then who you are privately. And then really specific to teaching and, and kind of unique about teaching is the perceived self. And that makes a lot of sense because the teacher is only a teacher because they have students, right? So the perceived self is that awareness that you are perceived by your students, by their families, by your colleagues, your director and so on. Um, and having an awareness that those three cells are always a part of you and that's who's actually interacting with the student. Um, is what I mean by having a sense of self.

Speaker 1: 5:08

It's, it's to me sounds like there's a little bit of a carry over a or connection with kind of young Ian understanding of identity. Is that completely foreign or silly way to think about things?

Speaker 3: 5:20

The distinction here is that a teacher is not taught how to see themselves that way. A teacher is taught typically, um, from, uh, kind of a training model of being selfless. And putting the students at the center. So if you put students at the center, uh, the struggle with that is that it then ask the question of, well then where are you? And the reality is is that you're never actually, uh, fully aware of who that student is. You only know who you believe that student to be. And that's about who you are. So if you are,

Speaker 4: 6:03

why I feel like you just said something very important. So say that one more time please.

Speaker 3: 6:10

So we're, we're never teaching who the student is, we're always teaching who we believe the student is and that's based on who we are. Yeah. And so if we don't know who we are and we've not been taught to explore it in that way, and that's actually a very, very difficult obstacle. Um, we're teaching our theory of the students and that's the best we can do as humans. But having an awareness of who we are, who's our private self, our public self are perceived self. Having that an awareness allows us to start uncovering why we see students in certain ways. And so tied within that are issues of implicit bias, right? Tied within that are why do we believe certain students can achieve and others can't achieve? Why do we believe certain students are shy while other students are passionate, right? Like so I think a lot of that work, um, that has also been embedded in how do we support students in their learning? How do we support brain development? How do we support all of these various areas is still kind of missing this piece of MMM. The way in which we see students is based on who we are. And if we're never taught to further explore that and pull it apart in a way that is not negative and it's not blaming, um, then we're still kind of missing the mark on how to support teachers in their development.

Speaker 4: 7:42

That literally just blew my mind, I think of blue docs mine as well. Um, and I guess I want to probe a little bit more, cause you said that process is, I'm not necessarily comfortable. Um, and I guess for me, I'm curious with the overlap between those three different selves, how hard is that exploration process for people, um, in just your research and then I know your work with teacher development, how hard is that process been, um, with your work with other teachers?

Speaker 3: 8:09

I wouldn't say it's unbelievably difficult. It's difficult if you're approaching it from a place of we already know, right? Because we don't know, um, we don't know what that would look like. Uh, we don't have years worth of research or years worth of professional development supporting teachers in understanding who they are. Um, it's actually a really a kind of black box of understanding

Speaker 4: 8:37

well that that paints a pretty bleak picture of where do we ever research. Then

Speaker 3: 8:43

we have a ton of research around teacher behavior, right? Otherwise known as teacher practice or teach teacher best practice. Um, but that's one very small piece of who a person is. Our behavior is or not really who we are and, and, and all of this worth around learning and the brain and the mind. Um, we know our behaviors are, are very small piece in our, what's happening in our mind is really what's driving that. So I wouldn't say it's unbelievably difficult, but it does take a shift and how we approach teachers. And so it means saying to a teacher, we're not going to put students at the center. We're going to put no one at the center. We're gonna realize this is an interaction. And that all of the people involved in that interaction, uh, is someone we need to understand. We're going to start with you because that's the only person you have control over. And now let's start pulling apart who you are. Okay? That sounds both terrifying and a little difficult. It's easiest to do when we just ask teachers to share their experience, but not share their experience in this. Like, this is a nice anecdotal story you can tell about you and your children in the classroom, but instead share very, very detailed experiences. Uh, like in, in professional development. I've done it before where I ask them, please describe the absolute worst interaction you've ever had with a student and the absolute best interaction you've ever had with a student. And then we just start pulling that apart. And from there what emerges is what is their public self? What is their private self, what is their perceived? So like an, I don't have to do much other than helping them to pull it apart. So it's not like I'm giving them any information. I'm just helping them organize what's already in their mind so that they can become aware that it's there and this is a way we can organize it so that you can then intentionally do your work with children.

Speaker 1: 10:45

I think I think about this in a kind of platonic allegory of the cave kind of way that I would imagine that awareness then leads me to step out of the cave and be blind for a little while. Is there a disorienting piece that teachers who are thinking through this process should probably expect? So, um, I'm Tryna, I'm trying to grasp onto your, again, I don't know why, why this is not who I am. Yes. Glory of the Cave, right? The people realize the images on the wall or not real. So tell me if I've got it. Yeah. Okay. This is probably better than me continuing one duck. If I do get what you're saying. It's actually perfect in line, perfectly in line with

Speaker 3: 11:34

we understand about the brain and how the brain learns. Um, and so all of my work is really grounded on a theory called dynamic skill theory. And what dynamic film theory basically says is the brain's forever changing. It's always changing based on the context that it's in. Um, and that when learning happens, um, let's say we were to map a student's development, right? And we're going to say this child is learning x and we're mapping that across like an x and y, you know, table. Typically we, we think we want to see that it's always a align, right, of exponential growth. It's always going up. But in reality what's happening is that there's all of these dips in spurts that occur. And those dips in spurts, like of this swirly lines generally goes up over time, but it has these dips in spurts and the learning's happening in the dip, right? And as a researcher or even as like an administrator, a teacher looking at this data might say, oh no, this student, like they're learning went down, look, look at what we're seeing. This line goes down. But actually what's happening is as they gain new information and they remap that and they had this new mental model, right? They formed new neural networks. Everything they knew before is challenged. So they may have totally gotten addition and subtraction and then you teach them multiplication and everything they knew about addition and subtraction is now challenged. And so it's going to look like they're in this like dazed and confused and I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. And my full understanding of the world is totally challenged. But then when they figure that out and they re calibrate their new knowledge into their old knowledge, they're actually going to be more cognitively savvy than they were before. So in in this question, which I think you raise of like once a teacher has awareness, I'd say the first thing is you can, you can never have awareness in the sense that it's always ongoing, right? You're always going to be aware of some new aspect of yourself, right? It's just going to continually deepen. Um, and so rather than thinking of a teacher's development the way we normally do, which is they have this best practice, right? We have this list of best practices. We have to think of a teacher as a learner. And so we would never say a student in our classroom has this knowledge. We would say here's the new knowledge they developed and it kind of goes along this trajectory over time. It's never ending. The same is true for the teacher. She or he is a learner. It's never ending. They're never going to have something. It's going to continue to develop and enhance itself. And it's going to be more cognitively complex over time as they start to gain more awarenesses. Is it going to challenge everything that they've done before? Yes. Is it going to seem like they're in this like flurry of confusion? Yes. Um, but where they come out of that next is going to be much more sophisticated in their ability to engage in their work with students than it was before. How does this a teacher

Speaker 4: 14:52

being able to make a classroom culture responsive and able to meet a broader sense of needs if they are aware of these perceived kind of notions that they have, how does that impact their ability to lesson plan? Is it kind of a very seamless process or is there still a lot of tugging and pulling there?

Speaker 3: 15:11

I think there is, there is, there's going to be both. Right? So I think there are pieces of it that you're as a teacher going to be able to recognize where you say, Oh, I can shift this small little thing. Like I'm always assuming that my, uh, my students who come from this background are shy. Right. But that's an assumption. Maybe I should actually talk to them, right? Like maybe that's not what she looks like. It's just what I think Shai looks like. Right. Um, so there are pieces of it that can be fairly seamless. Um, and then there are pieces that are definitely going to be really hard. All right, well what we're asking teachers to do in a scenario where we say you need to become aware of who you are on multiple levels is telling them to acknowledge that they matter, right? And that they matter in every decision that they make with their students. And that's just not the way they've been trained. And if we layer on top of that, so there's multiple layers to this and we layer on top of that, any teacher who is female, right? That's not the way we train females in our society that they matter, right? And that who they are actually is going to greatly impact their choices. If we layer on top of that, whether they are of color, whether they are immigrant, whether there's all of these other layers, mmm. Where that's not only not what's in the training of teachers, but it's also not how we've been conditioned in our society, um, to matter. So actually saying put the student at the center is a safer space for teachers because it means they can have weighed how they impact the situation. Um, but saying students are at the center also ignore students. And so part of my really passionate, I don't know if I would say she's passionate, part of my soapbox is saying when we claim that putting students at the center help support students, uh, we're actually doing the opposite. We're completely ignoring students by saying we're putting them at the center. So that's part of my messaging in, in this work around awareness.

Speaker 1: 17:18

So it also occurs to me that this has some pretty deep implications for principals and administrators, anybody who is leading a learning space because it requires them to also kind of look at their teachers in that in a very similar way. Right? So if you have a faculty that is made by definition, any group of people as diverse, but if you have a faculty that's made up of knowably diverse people, there's some visible diversity there. Um, maybe folks are coming from different spaces, then it is incumbent upon you as a leader to do some of that work with your faculty. Is when, would that be a piece that you would also argue?

Speaker 3: 17:59

Uh, I would and I do. All right, so it's, it's in the present is what you're saying. Um, and so the kind of simple, uh, nature of this work and awareness is that it seems very intuitive, right? Like of course the human in the classroom who is the teacher interacting with the other humans in the room, the students has an impact on how they interact with one another. Right. That seems like very intuitive. Of course we believe that to be true, but if we look at all of the ways in which we train teachers, if we look at the ways in which we evaluate teachers, if we look at the ways in which we attempt to support teachers, none of that is actually embedded within any of those. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. So what do we look for? There's five awarenesses. Oh, the one that's most obvious, right? As awareness of learner. Then there is awareness of your teaching process that would include anything in your practice planning, implementing, reflecting as well as your classroom culture. Everything goes in their awareness of interaction. Meaning are you aware that you are interacting with students and that there are various types of interactions. Some of them come from love and bonding with your students. Others are about recognizing you have a mutual effect on one another. Then there's awareness of context that's anything outside of your four walls of the classroom. So that could be things that are external and about the student, like their families, things that are external and about the institution that you're in. That could be the philosophy of the school, the community that you work within. And then things that are external that are belts, um, kind of large scale things like the government current events happening around the world. And then the last one is awareness of self.

Speaker 1: 19:47

Okay. So those are the things we look for. But like what would the advice be to a leader or an administrator who's looking to, to pick up on these pieces?

Speaker 3: 19:56

So what I talk to principals about is transparency and that teachers should be able to evaluate whether they fit in, in school based on the principle, being transparent about what matters to them. And a principal would typically say like, everything matters to me, right? Like everything in order for you to be here, an amazing teacher, you should have these pieces, right? The short order right there. Um, they go do observations and a teacher could be observed, check off everything in terms of best practice, right? And that list of best practice and a principal could still be like, yeah, but something about this teacher's still right, isn't right, right. And what I say to principals is take your last three observations of a, and have ones in there that you're like, I didn't think this teacher did, didn't really amazing job all the way through. I think this teacher was phenomenal. And see if you can find those five awarenesses in there, which come up most often. And that will tell you what you care about in your school. And that will tell you, um, what you want teachers to be doing. And if you're transparent about that, then your teachers actually have something to strive towards or something to decide, you know what, I'm not a good fit for this school. Um, but there's more transparency in that, right? Because the reality is, is the teacher, the principal, just like a teacher walks into that classroom every day and they are looking for something, but if they are not aware of what they're looking for, then that's not going to allow the teachers to really have deep conversations or really a kind of set goals for themselves as teachers to meet those expectations. Right. There's not transparency. And what are you really looking for? What do you really care about at this school?

Speaker 4: 21:57

Vanessa, I have a question that relates to actually something that happened recently in the classroom. As I mentioned before, I work in support local schools teaching AP computer science and our students were working on there create task, which is something they have to submit to the college board. And I went through and read through submissions and was kind of disheartened and hurt by that. I guess I knew it wasn't their best. Um, as far as what the product that they submitted to me and I had a conversation with my students and the students I work with, I have a class of 19 and they're all black students. Um, they're all freshmen and the school is 90% free and reduced lunch. And I tried to express to them as a black woman that the kind of the system is not necessarily set up for black children to be always successful. Our public educational system. It was intriguing to me hearing you talk about these awarenesses and just a principal coming in and, and you know, observing and doing those types of things. But I'm curious from my own betterment with the students that I work with in the future is how can I kind of take a situation where I don't feel like my students overall did the best that they could on some sort of assignment, but not necessarily internalize it and make the students feel bad, but see it as something that they can grow from or something that we all can be better. Um, with not only my own practices as a classroom teacher but also them as students. So I'm curious what those five awarenesses, if you could give me some free advice as far as how I could have maybe navigated or handled a situation where I feel like students are maybe not performing

Speaker 3: 23:46

our best or putting their best work forward. So I think the, the first thing I would consider as the teacher in that scenario is pulling apart what did you think they should have produced and then why do you think they should have produced that? And then from there considering is that because of the awareness I have about my teaching process, right? Like were there things that I planned in my routines, in my lessons, in my, um, kind of clarifying for them expectations that caused me to have the expectations I had for their product. What within my awareness of learner for these particular students was about my expectations of them. And so like within awareness of learner, there's needs meaning their emotional needs or physical needs. And then also development, having a consideration of where they are individually and collectively as a class. And is that what you were thinking about when you design certain lessons and routines and expectations for products? Was there a match between those of like, I know who these students are developmentally, individually, collectively, and I also know what their emotional needs are and I designed my teaching around that and then go over to the awareness of self and say, is there something about my private values that caused me to have any of those expectations of the student that I was not aware of? Did the fact that you are a black woman and you have black students, is there something playing a role in there that caused you to have certain expectations of them in their development or their emotional needs that caused you to plan your lessons in a certain way? Um, or did that not play a role? Did you not consider that in your planning? And so the reason I kind of often see those three playing together is that we're not taught to plan as teachers with ourselves in mind. Right? We're taught to plan with best practice in mind and we're taught to plan with learner needs in mind without really delving into who that learner is or who we think they are. And so I would kind of think about that scenario and say, what was I really expecting? Why was I expecting that? What about that student caused me to expect that? What about myself cause me to accept that. And was that all really clear to them?

Speaker 5: 26:26

A piece that I heard you say Shane and I want to pull out there as you also mentioned the college board, right? And so Vanessa you mentioned the self, the kind of policy governing

Speaker 3: 26:40

self awareness of context. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 26:43

And they knew that that's also at play in this particular example too, right? Because there's a, there's a certain curricular expectation that Cina doesn't necessarily get to get to play with, but she has to be aware of. Exactly. And it plays a role in all of our decision making. Right. And that's something that often stays hidden. Sometimes we hide it from ourselves and that we can think like, no, I was just planning the lesson for the learners, right? But we always have to be planning the lesson for who's judging it. And so we know, even if there's not a direct kind of short term link of that judgment, say by our directors or by a department of education or, right, like it's not a direct short term link. There's a larger link to who are we prepping these children for? Right? Like who's the society that we're prepping them for?

Speaker 3: 27:35

And that plays a role in how we design all of our lessons and all of our projects for students. And we do have different expectations and sometimes we're not aware that we do have different expectations, but we do. And it's, the thing about an awareness is that the reason I say it's not something that you can have is because it, it means just that you're aware of it. And therefore you can make decisions about how you're going to intentionally plan for that or intentionally ignore it. And that's the key, uh, kind of in the design as a teacher.

Speaker 4: 28:09

Um, that's interesting. Um, to take that perspective, like Zach talked about, for me, my expectation was we have to make sure that this meets college board requirements. And I think with computer science is tricky because in my classroom I have a lot of brilliant computer scientists, but this task asked for written responses. And so this is one of the few times I've actually had to read written responses or c kind of like essay style writing from my students. And so my expectation as well, they're brilliant at computer science, they're going to be able to express this in written form. And that wasn't necessarily the case I guess for me. And that was very insightful for you to say my expectations, but then as that kind of put on the college board expectations or kind of what my expectations of all all of a sudden been assumed to be. And I know they're doing another task soon, so it's kind of like what can I do differently to make sure the outcome as a little bit better for everybody? Um, myself included. Because like you said, the students aren't the center in myself. I'm not the center as well. Um, and so this was a good practice for me as far as learning, hearing from you what I can do better for their next task. That's going to be all written based as far as my expectations for them as computer sciences and in my expectations for them as writers, which can be two totally different things.

Speaker 3: 29:28

And your, even your expectations, like I, I'm a believer in transparency and your expectation could be, you know, I'm, I'm going to let him in and no, I'm going to let them know that I want them to be meeting what these board requirements are because that's who gets to decide a certain level of their success. But that's not who they are as successful learners. That's meeting a specific expectation that's going to allow them to then do other things they want to do. All right. So there's great empowerment in that transparency

Speaker 4: 30:07

and it also kind of allows us to be openers of those gates because we know we as practitioners know what gates exists, um, within our educational system. And so that empowerment piece, like you said, it's kind of like we're able to push maybe open that gate or that door that is stereotypically closed because we know that those hindrances are going to exist. So how can we best equip students to push open that gate either themselves or we set them up so that they can push open that gate themselves to get to where they would like to be.

Speaker 3: 30:41

Yeah,

Speaker 1: 30:42

where where they're decoders for sure. So to close as, or maybe our last piece, I'd love to know if there are some things that people are doing. I mean some practices that you see that may be you look at and say, Oh, I wish they would stop doing that and start doing this. Is there anything that you, that a person kind of tomorrow who's listening right now could say, all right, I'm going to try this out tomorrow. So you're trying to get me in trouble as we close, but just as we close, so the odds somebody hung with us to the end of a podcast episode, good jobs back. I'm a troublemaker. Did we not say that at the beginning? Yes you are.

Speaker 3: 31:21

So I would say that actually flies in the face of the things that I believe in about teaching. So I adore teachers and I think that they're doing, they're doing the work right there. They're doing that deeply invested where, and so one of the things I'm always really sure about, especially now that I'm wearing a researcher hat, is that I never go into a classroom and say, these are the things that you're doing currently that you shouldn't be doing. Um, rather I think that I'm supposed to be going in and learning from them. And so I would say off the bat, I don't have anything that I would say don't do this, you know? Um, what I would say about them as teachers is to start believing that they matter and that they're super integral to the relationship between them and a student. And that the more that they are open to understanding who they are and recognizing that actually students, that model of putting students at the center is not helpful to students because it does ignore the teacher and that the teacher is that part of the relationship and the relationship is what matters is that I would say to them, start truly investing in and believing that you matter a great deal and uncovering and understanding that better is what's going to help. Uh, I should say hate the word help is what's going to support and foster that transition that we need an education to kind of put teaching and learning as the most important thing.

Speaker 5: 33:09

Vanessa, I think that's a pretty fantastic way to close this out. Thank you so much for taking some time to talk with us. We really appreciate it. This has been, um, just a wonderfully thoughtful, I have a lot to, to kind of noodle on for the rest of the rest of my week. So thank you so much. Thank you. It's awesome. My pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 33:30

So what is the alignment of your private, personal and perceived selves as a teacher? When you tell the story of your teaching, do any of them even rank as main characters? How did Dr. Rodriguez have you reconsidering faithful devotion to student centered deaths? How might that reconsideration work to improve your abilities to help students learn? For us some sticky ideas where this question about the place of the teacher in a student centered space. So if you put students at the center, uh, the struggle with that is that it then asked the question of, well then where are you and this thought on the importance of recognizing we're acting as a lens when we see our students, whether we like it or not, we're never teaching who the student is. We're always teaching who we believe the student is and that's based on who we are. And finally this idea that we would do well to remember teachers are learners too and we might want to treat them as such. We flipped that model and we say everything we know about learning is true for students and teachers. Then it allows us to kind of use models that we've used for students before to say acres develop in much the same way any learner what? Because of humans. So let's use some of those models out of best support learners. Maybe we can decide it's not only acceptable but helpful to write ourselves into our own teaching stories. How are you going to consider your perceived self then your awareness of what's happening in your classroom. Tell us about it on twitter@coursemindandvisitthecourseofminewebsiteatcourseofmine.org for more on teacher awareness identities and leaving the center open. You can read works from our guests and learn what we're learning and join us for our next episode as we talked with Dr. Brewer Berg on what learning actually is and how we can think about the brain and understanding motivation. Until next time. I'm Shaina white and I'm Zack chase and we'll learn with the next time. Course of mind is an ISTE podcasts made possible in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, d a f an advised fund of Silicon Valley's community foundation. Our producer is Kripa Sundar, our editor and music maestro is Trevor Stout. You can find Shana on Twitter at Shana v White and you can find Zach@MrChase and Kripa is at@Kripa Sundar, and as always for more on how the learning sciences can inform your practice. Check out the course of mind Twitter feed@courseofmind, where you can learn about how other educators of applied learning sciences in the classroom

Speaker 6: 36:16

and learn what we're learning.