Zach Diamond  0:00  
Hey there, listeners. This is Zach, I hope you're all doing well and getting excited for summer break. I know I'm excited for summer break, I have a couple more weeks to teach. And then I am done. The podcast, however, is now on summer break. So we have completed our fifth season, which is unbelievable to me that we're already done with five seasons. But anyway, here we are, over this summer, just like we did last year, we're going to be publishing short casts, or sort of reruns of previous episodes that were popular, but I'm going to be cutting out highlights for you. So these episodes are just 10 to 15 minutes long with some of the best content from each episode. So we're gonna get into it with this one, which was episode 151 with Paul France on humanizing, teaching and learning. I'll be publishing these short casts for the next several weeks, and then we'll be back with Season Six as we get closer to the beginning of the school year. Enjoy. Welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other. So this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the modern classrooms project podcast. Hello, and welcome to season four of the modern classrooms project podcast. This is episode number 151. And my name is Zack diamond I use he him pronouns. And I'm a middle school digital music teacher in Washington, DC. And of course a modern classrooms implementer and mentor. Our topic for this episode is humanizing teaching practices, which is something that I'm very passionate about. And I'm joined by Paul France, a national board certified teacher and the author of the upcoming book make teaching sustainable. Welcome, Paul.

Paul France  1:56  
Thanks so much for having me. I'm so stoked to be here. I started as an elementary school teacher from 2010 until 2020, I spent four years in public school, teaching fourth and fifth grade, then I went to San Francisco, and I worked for an education technology startup company, a network of micro schools, formerly known as alt school, it's now closed. And that was where I got a lot of experience with personalized learning. Our hypothesis there was that if we provided every child an individualized playlist of activities, that they would that we would personalize their learning for them. And to make a very long story short, it didn't work. And and that is also, in addition to the multi age classroom sort of was a pivotal experience for me in my career, and just my understanding of what Personalized learning is, but then also what what it means to make teaching sustainable. Because the method we were using there was not a sustainable method for personalization. In part, it was just way too much work. But also because it was dehumanizing in the sense that kids were turned more towards screens and learning from screens, more than they were learning from each other or in community with one another. And so that for that humanization, or it really comes into play. By and large, a lot of the traditional practices probably, but I'm assuming that maybe you grew up on that I grew up on, right, a lot of those practices are not really grounded in humanizing learning. They're grounded in the, the industrialization of learning, right? So like, absolutely worksheet driven learning, textbook driven learning, these are all serving, you know, a bigger system that really is powered by standardized test scores. You know, there's really no way around that to I, you know, I hate to I hate to sound reductive, and I hate to like, bring it down to one key factor. But if you look at the emphasis on standardized test scores in our country, it it impacts it influences, everything that we do, and influences the way we think about teaching and learning. Right? Like, right? It's so powerful, and it's so insidious, right that that the desirability of neighborhoods and home values. Yes, I

Zach Diamond  4:13  
was gonna say home values are tied in. Yeah.

Paul France  4:15  
So if you think about it in that way, right, it really it kind of when you wait, it really when it really hits you, and it really sets in, it's like a wow moment. Holy cow. That is what learning is in our country. Like it's linked to property values. And so that's where you can sort of see like, why the textbook industry is so big and why people are so you know, get into a tizzy about standardized test scores. It's not just about how well is my kid doing in school, it's about this is like a currency in our culture. So shifting away from that industrialization and towards humanization means challenging things like that right and asking ourselves first, how are we defining success in school? Because if we're different I think success in schools solely on these, these standardized tests, these quantitative metrics, you know, generally standardized tests, or if we're even centering them and just sort of coloring everything else with more qualitative metrics, it's that is likely to dehumanize learning because it's serving a system. It's not serving individuals. And I think that's so central to humanizing learning, right is that is that we're teaching kids things, teaching kids skills, I should say, because we want them to be able to interact with communicate with and make sense of the world around them. And like my, you know, bleeding heart dream is that like, if kids can make sense of the world around them, and they can communicate with it and interact with it, then they can actually be partners in solving a lot of the problems that we face now, that are really scary problems, not that I want to scare kids at eight years old, and like, you know, submerge them in that. But in 10 years and 15 years, I want them to feel like they have the tools needed to interact with and communicate with and, you know, make an impact on the world that, that that helps us all.

Zach Diamond  6:10  
If I were to try and summarize all of this, it would be that it's a matter of priority, right? A matter of kind of why we're doing this, right? Because I think you and I absolutely agree, the things that happen in classrooms are valuable, you know, the whole system isn't exactly broken. But if we're only doing it in service of a standardized test that happens in May, you know, it's like, why the system serves itself and it's not useful. It doesn't really, it certainly doesn't humanize our kids that dehumanizes our kids in a lot of ways. And you're right, like, we don't need to put eight year olds to work on the world's most difficult problems, to start giving them the tools that they'll need to work on those difficult problems when they're older. Right when they leave school, when they leave college, when they're adults. That can be what school is for. And that engagement, that that that interest in something that's like a puzzle, like you said, or something that just grabs your attention like that, that is humanizing learning.

Paul France  7:12  
It is necessary to be seen, you know, and like, when when we say to kids like that, I mean, there's something as simple as your method, right? Your method is valid like you what you what you did today, I see the effort you put in today, I see what you tried to do today. And someone else saw what you did today, too, they saw you right, and they actually use what you did, you know, they use based on seeing you they use that to better themselves like that is it is validating and it is, it is feeling good. But it's feeling seen. And that is so important in our classrooms, I think so many kids don't feel seen in school. Right.

Zach Diamond  7:53  
And I think that that's why we see a lot of issues with belonging to like when we my school does lots of surveys, so many surveys, lots and lots of surveys, but we do these belonging surveys. And it's always lower than we would hope you know, and just it's just like, if the school doesn't, or if the if the teacher or if the class or the just the whole environment doesn't treat the student like a person. It's not like that. It's not a bridge too far for me to understand why they don't feel like they belong totally.

Paul France  8:23  
For instance, let's go back to the skip counting method, right? Like today, I learned that skip counting works for me to multiply by eight tomorrow, I'm gonna try skip counting again. Right that is that is a way to personalize learning. That is not me telling the kid what to write down. But that is prompting them to reflect. So that so that they're actually thinking, well, this is my next step, right? It's not sustainable. And this, this goes into my sustainability work. But like, it's not sustainable for me to constantly be doing that for every single kid in the classroom. It's just not I can't get around to 25 kids every day and tell them what their reflections going to be. I have to teach them a transferable skill, which is in this case, self reflection, so that they can use it to their benefit in the future and so that they can carry some of the load of personalizing their own learning. And that's like really central to my, my take or my theory on Personalized learning is that if we teach them those transferable skills, then they're actually partners in the process of personalizing and then it makes it more sustainable for me. But it's not just about my own sustainability, it's also about humanizing it right? It is more humanizing for them to cultivate that self awareness and then again use it to their benefit on their own.

Zach Diamond  9:42  
Any listener to this podcast who has heard me on like any episode ever will will have heard me go on and on about this. There are some specific episodes where I really dug into this with people but my personal thing is like, relationship building with the kids. I we were talking about standardized testing and it like it it actually breaks my heart, when they have to hand me their drawing to be shredded looks like the most unbearable thing that I have to do. I can't help but see these kids as people. And I think that the modern classrooms model has allowed me the sort of time and space and bandwidth as a teacher to treat them that way. You know, some days, they might not be able to learn, they might want to talk to me about something completely different. And I can do that for them. And I again, like this is a one time thing, it doesn't mean that I'll do it every single day with them. But they know that I can do that. And that's because of the self paced model, where I'm not lecturing to them.

Paul France  10:42  
They can have those experiences, but you have to change the way that you that you assess right like, and you have to change the tool you use, which is again, why I love journaling so much, because I can still teach in a very standards driven way. I can still use backward design, I can still design assessments that give me the information I need to inform instruction. And that will simultaneously humanize learning. And as much as I hate it helped me teach towards the, you know, metrics we're all forced to live within. Yeah, so there is there are ways to do it.

Zach Diamond  11:15  
Whenever I think are talking about this stuff, I get into this mind set of like, something big has to change. You know, like, there's lots of great things happening in schools. And in a lot of ways, schools are completely messed up, like the whole system feels like it's broken sometimes. And so there's lots to talk about, obviously, and we could keep going forever here. But like, you know, what does an ideal future look like? And I obviously don't know the answer, and I don't think anybody does, right. But it sometimes feels to me, like something has to change. But I guess let me turn it back over to you, and ask you what you hope to see in the future and what goals you have.

Paul France  11:52  
Yeah, I mean, in doing this sustainable teaching research, like I, I, I did come to that same idea, right, that this does feel so systemic, and it feels so much of it feels outside of my control, or anyone's can any one individuals control. And it is right, like you, one person can't just burn down a whole system overnight and not harm anybody in the process, right? It actually burning the system down is not a sustainable solution, it would cause more harm than good. And I do believe that, you know, change is a mix of, I think if I think of change, like ripples, you know, it's like, you can have one little ripple and it'll it'll eventually span out through throughout the whole lake, you know, the whole pond. But when you have a lot of ripples, you have a lot of little wind that turns into a bigger wind, it actually can result in some pretty significant change. And so my my hope is that people start having the difficult conversations about sustainability that we need to have in schools.

Zach Diamond  13:01  
Well, this stuff gets me all worked up. Like I really, really this. This matters a lot to me. And I hope that I've done an okay job. articulating that and you've done an amazing job, like everything you've said, has just resonated with me so much, Paul. So thank you for for all of this. I've really enjoyed this conversation. How can our listeners connect with you?

Paul France  13:21  
Yeah, so you can visit my website, make teaching sustainable.org. I'm on Instagram and Twitter, at sustain teaching. that's all one word sustained teaching. Those are the best ways to connect with me. I love hearing from folks. So you can also email me at Paul at make teaching sustainable.org If you want to get in contact and also like I'd love it, if you picked up the book make teaching sustainable. That's going to give you just more of my ideas on what I think we need to do based on the research that I did. And yeah, that's how people can can get in touch.

Zach Diamond  13:59  
And of course, thank you all for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday. Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at WWW dot modern classrooms.org. And you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at Learn dot modern classrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modern class prize. That's p r o j we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the modern classrooms project podcast.