How Important is Voice and Transition Planning To Cohesive Student and Family Support Systems?

Last week I was excited to be a part of the first Kids Summit in Ohio.  Over 900 leaders from the juvenile court system, county boards of MRDD and Child and Family Services, Family and Children First Councils, The Ohio Dept of Children and Youth, and Educational Service Centers gathered to collaborate on how to best work across departments to meet the needs of families within our state.  The morning started with a powerful panel discussion that included 5 individuals who have lived within these support systems.  Common threads from across all of their stories included the importance of seeking out…and listening to voices of the students and families who you are serving. And, the need to put safety nets in place along with strategies for gradually pulling back support while at the same time providing mentoring and transition plans to ensure that the individuals can sustain their success.  What do transitions back into your district and back into classrooms for students and their families look like?

 I wanted to share with all of you some of the most impactful statements made by the two students who participated in the panel.  First, Yonnae Hobbs, who at the age of 18 was disconnected from her adopted family.  What a powerful advocate for the children in the stats shared that morning who make it past the age of one. She shared, “That there is a person behind every policy and at the end of every policy there is a child”. Wow. This is such a strong statement that challenges all of us to look at our own policies and systems through the lens of the children who are meant to benefit from them.  She built on this idea, adding “Let’s not be the architects of ideas, let’s grab our hard hats and build a blueprint for every child - where their voices are valued and connections to their families and their medical history are maintained.”  This statement really captures why, as district leaders and as bridges to community services, we must step outside of our silos to put together the best system of supports for each child who falls under our district’s frame of responsibility.  Both she, and the next student, Jaylin Hart,  emphasized the importance of transition planning that comes along with teaching the skills needed to advocate for themselves, find scholarships for post high school education, and a pipeline to entrepreneurship and college.  What do your transition plans look like for students whose lives may be impacted by trauma? For foster students in your district? Jaylin shared that he wanted to be adopted, but the caseworker moved ahead with paperwork for him to age out of the foster system.  He was put into the foster system at the age of 1 month and lived in 50 different homes during his 18 years. Jaylin shared that he felt that during his childhood, he didn’t have a voice. “We deserve to have a real voice in our lives”. 

This was a challenge to those in attendance.  What can that voice sound like within the court system, within school systems, within child and family services systems? How can we be more intentional about giving children and parents a voice in the decisions that are made about their supports and services?  One of the adults on the panel was a mother who has become a parent advocate.  In an insightful comment, she shared that schools teach parents to be an advocate for a child by their lack of recognition of the role of the parent - or the parents voice. This sparked a conversation at our table about how to extend strength based thinking and solution seeking discussions from classrooms to parent conferences and IEP meetings.  The importance of voice, and lack of voice was carried through the keynote presentation by Darneshia Allen from Safe Babies.  She reminded us that our youngest children don’t have a voice to articulate their needs, and the older children have voices that aren’t heard, and as a result they will show you what they can’t tell you through their behaviors.  

My key takeaway from her message was her statement that “You can’t support the children if you don’t anchor the adults in support”.  How might this help you to think about your planning for MTSS this year? How might this drive the connections you can build and strengthen with your community partners - all of whom may have a role to play in the lives of the students and their families within your district.   What can we do to be more family focused, culturally responsive and cohesive in our work? What does it take to take on a mindset of mandatory supporting - to build capacity and empower students and families?  The after lunch county-wide conversations were a starting point for continuing to strengthen this cohesive, collaborative network.  Key issues in the county conversation I participated in included working toward a proactive county wide truancy model because we know one strong connection for students and families are the schools.  How can strengths based thinking apply to attendance?  Who in your district should be involved in these kinds of discussions? Who in your community? Your county? How will you continue to engage with this network? 

Resources To Spark Your Thinking

• Read more about Safe Babies

• Ohio Department of Children and Youth

On a different note, I have mentioned in Talk OH Tuesday that I have been talking regularly with my friend and colleague Laura Germishuys, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Over the past year, we have recorded our first season of our podcast, What I Want To Show You. Each episode is between 30-50 minutes long and includes a sharing of our ideas and experiences on a wide range of topics - always tying back in some way to AI and education.  The first episode - Food and Connections,  is now available on Spotify and Youtube.  Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/2JYWFJm8HYTChyVoKXyz84 YouTube:https://youtu.be/VJIDLcyODP8

Are You Ready To Be A Data Storyteller?

Welcome back! This is the first Talk-OH-Tuesday of the 2024-2025 school year.  A little housekeeping first.  Please feel free to pass this along to colleagues. If an email address needs to be added or updated, reach out to charshryock@gmail.com.  You may see some guest bloggers this year - or maybe you would like to stretch your wings a little and be a guest writer for Talk-OH-Tuesday - let me know!  

If you watched the Olympics and the Paralympics this summer, you heard a lot of data stories around hours of training, record setting times, medal counts, crowd attendance, and temperatures. How are your own data storytelling skills? This is the right time of year to identify the data that you will use throughout the school year to tell stories of growth, achievement, inclusivity, adaptability, and change.  Data stories can also be the spark that drives innovation, informs budget decisions, and maximizes staffing. Students also need data storytelling skills, beginning with the ability to use data to set goals and monitor their progress.  

There are 3 keys to telling an impactful data story.  First, identify the audience who needs to hear this story.  It might be board members, administrators, teachers, staff, parents or the broader community. Next, what is the greater good or big picture that will be the larger context for the story. Finally, select appropriate data. I know this seems like an obvious step, yet being intentional about what data to best tell a story can make or break its impact.  This may include selecting data from multiple sources to tell a more complete or compelling story. And, represent the data visually - excel spreadsheets and data tables do not tell an engaging story. 

Here are some of the most recent data sources that are available to districts - and suggestions for how they may be used to tell effective data stories. 

Attendance Data:  Sources include the chronic absence reporting on the District Report Card - and in more detail in the Advanced Reports (Released September 13), teacher attendance data found in the Equitable Access Report, and student tardy and absence data found in the Student Information System (SIS).  Attendance data can help tell the story of student and staff engagement.  It can also be used to pinpoint gaps in resources and supports for students who fall into subgroups by gender, economic status, learning disability, race/ethnicity, and English learner  status. 

Released Items - Item Analysis Data - OST/EOC: Sources include the Item Analysis Report found in the Ohio State Testing Centralized Reporting System (CRS), and the OST/EOC results included in the District Report Card - Advanced Reports.   Released items can help tell a number of stories.  First, they can help to describe the overall strengths and challenges of a group of students, which is useful to the teachers of the incoming students. And, if you look at patterns in the item analysis data over a number of years, it can tell the story of strengths and gaps within instructional materials and learning opportunities at a grade level, including a balance or imbalance of depth of knowledge levels. Helping students and parents to decode the data story that student score reports can tell is also an important part of students being able to monitor their own learning process. 

Enrollment Data - Sources include the Student Information System (SIS), ODDEX - the system that tracks students in CCP courses and students who are moving across districts, and the District Report Card.  Enrollment trends drive budgets, staffing, course offerings, and can be related to student engagement. Digging into enrollment data within CCP, AP or CTE programs can tell the story of student planning post high school.  Looking at enrollment trends across district subgroups can help tell the larger story of the community or the diversity/inclusivity of the school district and district supports. 

No matter what data story you decide to tell, be sure to own your story! Include next steps that will come as a result of the story and be sure to credit the staff members and students whose work is reflected in the story.  And, don’t forget that Generative AI can be a powerful partner in data storytelling. 

Resources To Spark Your Thinking

• NPR 2024 Student Podcast Challenge Finalists - This is a different kind of story telling, and includes some amazing students across all grade levels. https://www.npr.org/2024/08/30/g-s1-19902/student-podcast-challenge-2024-finalists 

• Harvard Business Review -How To Effectively Tell A Story With Data https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/data-storytelling 

• Canva - Data Visualization For Students (all schools have access to Canva for education at no cost ) https://www.canva.com/learn/data-visualisation-for-students/ 

• Yale Library - Common Types of Data Visualization https://guides.library.yale.edu/datavisualization/types

• Ohio Regional Data Leads Created Tool for Discussing Item Analysis - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J_BRQKwOKopQv0UXsUlY32-vfAZC1yX5KmtXuU4Nff0/edit?usp=sharing 

Why It Is Important As A School Leader To Have A Plan For How To Respond To The Death Of A Student

As we celebrate commencement and honor students who are successfully moving on to the next grade or their next school, it is important to pause and remember the students we lost this year. Their lives have left a lasting impression on their classmates, teachers, administrators, and staff. This is a hard subject to talk or write about, and for some of you, it may raise very raw or recent emotions. If this is difficult for you, know that you are not alone. I encourage you to reach out to a counselor or seek support. (The Ohio Care Line)

We are fortunate to have many caring school counselors who have participated in the additional grief and crisis support training. They readily respond within their own districts and to neighboring districts, colleagues, and students when needed at the time of a death. It is important to know that these counselors work in your district every day and are a resource whenever you or your students need to talk about the memories of the student or your own emotions. These counselors can also facilitate discussions with teachers and parents on how best to honor the memory of the student, both now and when their class graduates.

I want to share two impactful experiences I had as an administrator to illustrate how working collaboratively with a team that includes school counselors can result in meaningful, supportive experiences during difficult times.

First, as a Superintendent, a group of seniors approached me with a request to incorporate the memory of their classmate who had committed suicide as an underclassman into the commencement ceremony. This request raised layers of questions and concerns, all of which needed careful consideration. By working as a team—with the principal, school counselor, key teachers, the students, and the parents—we developed an approach that was mindful of best mental health practices and research, honored the memory of the student in a way that fit the celebration of graduation, and respected the wishes of the parents. The students included a rose for their classmate, we denoted the student within the commencement program, invited the students parents to attend the commencement ceremony as my guests, and as a commencement speaker, I referenced her and the positive impact she had on the class. I hope that for the students and the parents, there was a sense of closure.  Each situation is unique and it is important to bring together a team that includes counselors or a community professional who has had training in how to respond to a death, including a suicide, in the decision making.

In the second example, the district created a new position that empowered one of our school counselors to take on the Care Coordinator role for the district. She became the single point of contact for families in crisis, connecting them to community resources for mental health, food and utility support, legal services, health care, and alternative school placement. She also served on the district support team. By designating a single point of contact for parents and administrators, we were able to remove barriers to care and resources, make communication more efficient, and build trust relationships with families. In this role, she worked with counselors from Hospice, the school counselor, school administrator, teachers, and the parents of a student battling cancer. She also connected with the families of the student’s close friends, developing a tiered plan for support. This plan included working first with the parents of the friends, then the friends themselves, and finally the larger class to discuss what their friend was experiencing, how to be supportive, and how to navigate their own complex emotions as their friend’s death became imminent. It was a model that honored the wishes of the family and the child, and it helped everyone involved grow in their ability to acknowledge and work through the range of emotions that come with the death of a friend.

I chose to address this topic this week because we need to have a plan for how we will respond to the death of a child when it occurs, and as that child’s class continues through the PreK-12 journey. Now is a good time to talk about that plan or review your existing plan as an administrative team.  As difficult as it is to talk about this, it is important to share these plans and experiences with each other so we can learn and grow together, and have a larger pool of resources to draw from when the time comes. My heart goes out to those of you who have had to lead or teach through the loss of a child this year or at any time in your career.

What Is Sustainable About Student Work?

Nothing - by Naomi Shahib Nye, Young People’s Poet Laureate 

from her book Cast Away, Poems For Our Time.

Nothing a child

ever does

is trash.

It is 

practice. 

April is Earth month. Sustainable practices are one way to be environmentally conscious. Efficiency and conservation of resources are part of sustainability. Finding new uses for objects and shifting away from single use materials are key actions. How does this translate into our classrooms? What is sustainable about student work? How do we construct assignments or tasks that have more than one use? Nye’s poem made me think about all the energy that teachers put into grading and putting feedback on student work. I have shared before that grading isn’t feedback.  One of her other poems, Three Wet Report Cards is about old homework papers and report cards she finds lying on the ground, discarded. “Smudgy grades. Teacher Comment areas bare…Feeling great sadness for the hard work of teachers filling in so many little boxes dreary evaluating and judging when what teachers love best is that spark of discovery that great question the shy person finally speaking from the stage”. How does this spark your own thinking about how to continue to support learning as inquiry? How will you change your feedback over the next few weeks to be more of a dialogue with students rather than a one way conversation.  Work worth doing is work that provides opportunities to grow knowledge, to learn from mistakes, or gives students entry points to apply their thinking and get feedback to refine it.  Recycling bins are filled with student work that has been discarded.  What if instead students curated all of that evidence of their learning progress in a notebook or digital folder arranged not by due date or unit, but by what they learned from doing it and how it moves them toward a goal? Work that could be revisited, repurposed or used to spark a new idea. Work that becomes the starting point for dialogue about learning with teachers and classmates.  April is the beginning of fourth quarter, and a chance to make your student work more sustainable! 

Resources To Spark Your Thinking

• Edutopia Article - 3 Techniques For Providing Students With Feedback

• Better Lesson - Giving and Receiving Peer Feedback 

• PBS Learning Media Earth Day Resources 

• NEA’s Earth Month interactive calendar of resources 

• Earth Day 2024 -Planet Vs Plastics

Upcoming Opportunities

Calling all educators! Register today for the May 9 FREE Northwest Ohio AI Summit @ Kalahari: bit.ly/NWOhioAISummit24 Educators from across the state of Ohio will come together, be inspired, and share their expertise and ideas around AI Literacy and innovation. Learn more about AI trainer and keynote presenter Rebecca Bultsma: https://rebeccabultsma.com @rebeccabultsma @aiedu_org @oesca

How Are You A Projector Of Your Student's Strengths?

 “Even though I know some day you’re gonna shine on your own, I will be your projector.” Beyoncé  from the song, The Protector, on her new album, Cowboy Carter

This one line expresses so clearly for me what it is like to be a teacher who believes each and every student has a spark that is worth protecting and growing.  A teacher who sees students through a lens of what they bring to the learning, not deficit thinking.  A teacher who makes sure all students are seen and heard.  We can get so caught up in the adult side of education, that we may unintentionally neglect our role of projector, a person that brings into focus student strengths and makes sure they can see these in themselves. 

April is a good time to revisit this by intentionally engaging students in reflecting on where they have come as learners. What are they still curious about? What are they passionate about? Have they accomplished their goals? Do they need to revise their goals? This is where you can be the projector, making sure that they can see themselves as being valued members of the class, and successful learners. And, making sure they hear and see that you believe in them, and have high expectations for each of them.  I will be honest.  Asking students to set a goal where they improve a score from 67 to 75 without actually identifying what will change in their own knowledge/skills or what they will do/have done to make that change isn’t really acknowledging that they can shine. Teaching students how to write their own SMART goals is one alternative.   This is where Generative AI can be useful. It can create goal stems that students can use to create a personalized SMART goal. It can also be used to create student friendly rubrics to help them reflect on their learning progress either through journaling or curating a portfolio of their work.  Integrate peer feedback and collaboration by pulling in student work samples from this year or years past to provide context so students see where they have been, where they are and where they can still go. 

April is also a good time to check in on your own planning for the rest of the year. Where are there opportunities to make connections to your students’ lived experiences? Generative AI can help here by suggesting ways to incorporate student cultural backgrounds, interests and experiences into lessons.  How can you reimagine lessons or tasks to give more student voice and choice in a safe place to iterate, to be creative or to push their own thinking? Using choice boards, project based learning and inquiry activities are all effective strategies. Generative AI can be useful in framing project based learning and inquiry activities that are aligned to student interest and grade appropriate knowledge/skills.  How will you keep the projector on in your classroom?    

Resources To Spark Your Thinking

• You can watch the music video for The Protector, which includes Beyonce’s 6 year old daughter, on YouTube. 

• Indiana University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning Blog - Rejecting the Deficit Model

• The Power of Collective Efficacy - ASCD

• ChatGPT 3.5 no longer needs a login, although if you have a login it will save your conversations.  This is a good chance to compare Open AI's ChaGPT 3.5 with Microsoft Copilot, which incorporates Open AI technology.

Upcoming Opportunities

• Greater Cleveland Council of Teachers of Math (GCCTM) Spring Workshop is just around the corner April 13  9:00-1:00 at the ESC of Northeast Ohio 6393 Oak Tree Blvd South, Independence.  Register HERE 

• Student Achievement Partners secondary literacy course, Improving Reading for Older Students will open this month! This is not an Ohio DEW approved course. It is a useful course for teachers, higher ed staff and administrators looking to continue to expand their learning around specific Tier 1 instructional strategies for supporting literacy in secondary classrooms. Sign up to be one of the first to know when you can enroll. https://buff.ly/3vsbLIp 

• You are invited to attend the aiEDU and Ohio Educational Service Center Association's 2024 AI Summit Registration! We invite educators from across the state of Ohio to come together, be inspired, and share their expertise and ideas around AI Literacy and innovation. Choose from one of four AI Summits scheduled during May and August 2024. I am one of the presenters at the Sandusky Summit on May 9. All AI Summits are FREE to Ohio ESC employees, district leaders, building leaders, and K-12 teachers.  REGISTER HERE The AI Summits will take place from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM ET on the following dates:

• May 2nd, 2024 AI Summit - Dayton, OH

• Venue: Sinclair Community College Bldg 12, 444 W Third St, Dayton, OH 45402

• Hotel Accommodation: AC Hotel, 124 Madison Street Dayton, OH 45402

• Hotel Website: AC Hotel Dayton

• Keynote Speaker: AJ Juliani

• May 9th, 2024 AI Summit - Sandusky, OH

• Venue: Kalahari Conference Center, 7000 Kalahari Drive, Sandusky, OH 44870-8628

• Hotel Accommodation: Kalahari Conference Center, 7000 Kalahari Dr, Sandusky, OH 44870

• Hotel Website: Kalahari Conference Center

• Keynote Speaker: Rebecca Bultsma

• May 23rd, 2024 AI Summit - Independence, OH

• Venue: Holiday Inn - Independence, 6001 Rockside Road, Independence, OH 44131

• Hotel Accommodation: Holiday Inn - Independence, 6001 Rockside Rd, Independence, Ohio 44131 United States

• Hotel Website: Holiday Inn - Independence

• Keynote Speaker: Ken Shelton

• August 13th, 2024 AI Summit - Cambridge, OH

• Venue: Pritchard Laughlin Civic Center, 7033 Glenn Hwy Cambridge, OH 43725

• Hotel Accommodation: Fairfield Inn & Suites, 8700 Dozer Road Cambridge, OH 43725

• Hotel Website: Fairfield Inn & Suites Cambridge

• Keynote Speaker: Dan Fitzpatrick

How Are You Intentionally Putting Brain Research Into Practice?

How are you intentionally putting brain research into practice in your classroom, building or district?  What is changing as a result? This weekend, I attended Glen Whitman and Meg Lee’s ASCD Conference session, Redesigning Teaching, Learning, And Schooling Using Brain Science. They started off the session with a table based discussion using the Face The MBE (Mind Brain Education research) Card Deck developed by The Center for Transformative Thinking And Learning. The goal, can we identify the neuromyths and the neurotruths.  We sorted cards into piles either I already know and do this OR I purposefully avoid doing thing. Here is one of the cards we discussed: “Class time is too valuable to use for tasks focused on student reflection and metacognition” Is this neuormyth or neurofact?  Check the Resources To Spark Your Thinking section below to see the answer, and the research citation.  How do neuromyths impact decisions about what to do or not do in a classroom? Glenn Whitman has made it a goal to ensure 100% of his faculty use MBE research in their instruction and avoid nueromyths.  Each teacher has posted outside their classroom an info page - Researched Informed Teaching In My Classroom- that includes their name and picture, what they teach, a brief description of their passions, the books that they are currently reading related to their professional/subject interests, and the Research Informed Focus being applied in their classroom - and why.  In the example they shared, the Chemistry teacher was currently implementing active learning strategies to increase student engagement and content comprehension.  

This presentation sparked a number of ideas for me.  I liked the cards as a way to incorporate Mind Brain Education research into a staff meeting, principal newsletter, TBT or BLT time or a professional learning session. The teacher info page would be a great tool for principal walkthroughs and observations - giving a specific focus for questions pre/post observation around what MBE research will look like/sound like in the classroom. What will the teacher be doing? What will the students be doing? What feedback will be helpful in refining the implementation of MBE?  Taking time as a staff to talk through the neuromyth cards, where might those myths be in practice in the school? Why? How does the research change thinking about it? What new professional learning might be needed? In addition to the card deck. The Center For Transformative Thinking and Learning has also developed coaching materials, along with books, a blog, and roadmaps for MBE teaching - by grade band.  Are you interested in testing your own Mind Brain Education IQ? Take their free diagnostic HERE. 

Resources To Spark Your Thinking

• https://www.thecttl.org/research-base/ 

• Frederick County Public Schools - Maryland MBE Resource Page 

• TedTalks - TedEd Collection on the topic Mind Matters

• Answer to the MBE Card… False (nueromyth) “Research suggests that interventions focused on building metacognitive ability can have a great impact on student achievement. However, doing this can be difficult and requires strategic effort over time on the part of the teacher - hence, the benefit of doing it in class. Remember that reflection and metacognition are different. Think about how you can structure reflection activities in ways that build metacognition”  citation: Bruyckere, P. D. (2018). The Ingredients for Great Teaching. SAGE Publications Ltd.