Who Assigns Agency?

In the second portion of our interview, we're deepening our conversation with Dr. Corey Drake. We discuss the role we play as educators, how peers and students impact each other, and how the environment and content play a part.


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Dr. Corey Drake: 0:00

And assuming that when I'm paired with somebody, or I'm grouped with somebody, it's because they're bringing something I can learn and I'm bringing something they can learn. And part of our job as students is to figure out, what is that okay?

Ashley O'Neil: 0:13

Now we're recording.

Unknown: 0:18

So welcome to teach. Wonder. Yes, welcome to teach wonder, a podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neill and Julie Cunningham.

Ashley O'Neil: 0:34

We all worry about new drivers. We just do. I don't think I've spoken to an adult who cares about a new driver who knows one who doesn't have that slightly nervous tension in their grin as they talk about it, sure they're proud of their new driver, but also the stakes are high, and how do you know when they're ready? One of our staff members gives driving tests as part of her version of retirement, and something that makes her really good at this job is the fact that she is utterly unflappable. You got a lead foot. She's gently reminding you to look at your speedometer you run a stop sign. She's cheerily talking you through the steps to pull to the nearest parking lot to end your test. Why does she do this? Why does she stay so calm and so steady through all these things? It's because she gets that there are two factors to determining a successful driver, knowing the skills and having the practice, that's one thing, but believing in your ability and feeling confident on the inside is what makes a driver also because confident drivers who don't know what they're doing sure they're going to fail that driving test. But so are individuals who know every single aspect of their car in law, but don't have their confidence and their own ability. Today on our podcast, we're bringing you the rest of our conversation with Dr Corey Drake, and it's all about agency. But before we do, Julie and I have a couple of words to walk you through. What to listen for

Julie Cunningham: 1:56

as we continue our conversation on agency, I'm hopeful that we can keep in mind the following statement, this idea that we can change how we get somewhere, if we have agency over the process, if we agree that it feels good as a learner to have control over how we achieve a goal, then we adults need to look at how we can support learners in achieving their goals. There is some amount of risk and allowing yourself the vulnerability to learn something new. As adults, it's our responsibility to mitigate the risk by providing transparency around the goal and creating a safe learning space to achieve the goal. One way to do this is by providing a variety of opportunities for learners and scaffolding experiences based on student needs. In this episode, we will discuss what this might look like.

Ashley O'Neil: 2:42

Also, how do students access the curriculum at grade level, and what does that access or lack thereof, have to do with developing agentic learners?

Julie Cunningham: 2:51

This brings us to the idea of listening to student cues. If students want to try something that might be out of their ability level, what do you do? What cues are they giving you to listen to, and how do you respond? Another thing to pay attention to in this episode is how student groups might communicate competence. Most classrooms group students in some way, shape or form. What does that mean to the students, and what does that mean for student competence. And then finally, we hope that you'll listen to this episode and pay attention to some examples of how agency might play out in classrooms and content areas enjoy, I

Ashley O'Neil: 3:40

think, from another practical strategy, or, like, how this plays out in the classroom standpoint, it can also look like giving kids, like, sometimes we do this thing where, like, we that student can't handle that text yet, right? And so that would be really challenging for them, and they're just going to get frustrated, and they're just going to get defeated. And so they can't do that, so I'm going to set them up for success by giving them one that is appropriate, which in some context and in some spaces and places, there is a time for students to have text that is a just perfect fit for them so they can work on really, really important skills, right, really phonetic, foundational reading skills or whatnot. But if we're often telling students that they can't handle something, there is a cost to that constant communication. And that constant communication is like, Oh, I can't handle this. And so I think another piece of it is, is giving students continual choices, even if you're not sure they're ready for that thing. So you can say, like, I'm not sure that they're ready for this yet, but they want to try. Let's do this right. And continually saying, like, I believe, yeah, let's go for it, and giving them the opportunity, I think is really important. When I think about, I'm going to pull my parenting card for just a second, because I have a five year old, and sometimes, like, for a really long time, he had, he. Help going up the stairs. And I don't really remember the last time I had to help him up the stairs right like, there wasn't a day that I can say, Oh, he no longer needed me to walk him up the stairs. That day happened, but I don't remember what that was, but it only happened because every day I gave him the opportunity to do it by himself. And there were days when he wasn't ready, and I had to be there, like, ready to go, but every single day, if he wanted to go up the stairs by himself, I was, I was ready to do that with him. And so sometimes I think, like student, if you give them this big of a space, they'll fill that big of a space. If you make the space twice as big, they're going to work to fill the space twice as big. And that doesn't mean just putting them out there and saying, Good luck. We'll see how this goes, but it does mean honoring where they think they're capable of, and saying, Okay, you think you're capable of that. I believe in you too. And that goes a long way. Yeah, I

Dr. Corey Drake: 5:52

think that's a great point. I think, you know, this happens too with like, broader equity conversations, right? One way you could think about competence, and finding competence in students is, well, if I just reduce the demand of this content enough, or if I reduce the demands of this task enough, I'll find where they're competent, right? And, like, that's kind of the opposite of what we want to do, right? And so you're saying, like, set up this high demand task that set up these opportunities to demonstrate, to fill up the space. The other thing I wanted, like, be clear about is it's not just the teacher who assigns competence and who communicates these messages, and I think, a big strategy, not only a way to help students develop their own perceptions and understandings and beliefs and their own competence, but the role of peers is super important, and I think particularly about the ways we group students or pair students, and it often becomes, I think, in more traditional classrooms, like there's The helper and the person who's being helped. Or there's a strong student in each group who can really, like pull the group along, and everyone knows who that student is. Or, you know, we have the high group and the low group, right? In any of those cases, we're communicating to half or more of those students that they are not competent, because you need to be paired with someone who can help you. You need to be put in the group with the strong students so that they can pull you along. Or you're in the low group that we all know is the low group that's getting probably reduced content, where, instead, if we have a belief that everyone is competent, everyone is making sense. Then when we pair people, or we group people, we do it with the understanding that they are learning from each other, that they each have things to bring to the table, that they each have things they can learn from each other. Because even though they're each competent, they're competent in different ways, because we all are competent in different ways. We all make sense in different ways. And that's a strength, and that's something we can learn from each other, versus this idea of you're bringing confidence that I need to receive, right? Or this person is bringing competence that we need to receive, or we all need to work with the teacher, because we're not competent. But that group that can go work on their own, they must be competent. And so I think there's a lot to be done, both by the teacher and how you pair and group students, but then also how you facilitate students recognizing each other's competence and assuming that when I'm paired with somebody or I'm grouped with somebody, it's because they're bringing something I can learn and I'm bringing something they can learn. And part of our job as students is to figure out, what is that? What is that really cool way that Ashley's thinking about that might really help me with how I'm solving the problem, right? How did Julie communicate this in a way that might help me think about how I'm making sense of this problem? And so I think that's another shift that really puts the burden, but also the opportunity on peers to recognize their own and each other's confidence.

Julie Cunningham: 9:06

Yeah, I was thinking, Ashley, with your parenting example, and that plays a role in the classroom example as well, right? Of allowing the student to choose the more difficult text, if they so choose. But there's, I think there's two things going on there. So I think those are both really nice examples of growth mindset, which was on our list of questions, right? Like, how is growth mindset play a role here? And all those are great examples of ways in which students can have growth mindset and their growth mindset can be supported. But additionally, I think you sort of mentioned it, Ashley, when you said I'm willing to do that with him to go up the stairs, is that there's a safe space, right? So there's a safe space in the classroom, if you're going to demonstrate your competence alongside your peers, or we're going to assume you and your peers are all competent, or all competent at something, right in the group. Then there has to be this recognition of that with your peers, and also a safe space to say, Okay, I've gotten as far as I can get in this text. That's really difficult today, and I'm getting frustrated, and I'd like to now do this instead, right? That's agency over your learning again, saying I, in order to get to here, I'm going to choose my path, but in order to be able to choose my path, it has to be safe enough for me to say I can't do this today or I want help.

Dr. Corey Drake: 10:30

Right? Yes, I can't do this today. I can't do this yet. I need some support. I need some help, right, whatever. And again, having agency to even kind of recognize like what might help me in this moment? What could I ask for? Who could I ask? You know, those kinds of questions. I think that is really important to think about kind of that safe and supported environment. I think, Julie, you said earlier, right? It's not that we're just like throwing you out there and, you know, do this task, no supports, no no scaffolds, but it's you get to choose how and when you you ask for help and how and when you jump in and really figure things out and have that productive struggle.

Ashley O'Neil: 11:14

Yeah, I think it also comes with a sense of being honest about what are all of the competencies that that task is made up of, right? So, like, if I'm asking even something really, quote, unquote simple, like, hey, go do this math sheet. Well, I'm working with your peers at the table, right? And then when you're done, you can go do XYZ that math sheet, because it's 30 problems, and because of the setup of it is about speed and stamina. It's about a written task. It's about fitting things into the boxes. It's about all of those things. And so the child who is maybe on the outside, what maybe the stereotypical competent kid is the one who sits quietly, does the entire thing, finishes it with relative accuracy and turns it in. But all of those things are not necessarily related. You may have a student who's a really great mathematical thinker who spends time tumbling the quantities around in his brain and has thought of eight ways to solve that one problem, but it took him longer because he's really deeply engaged in that first problem. But the length of the exercise is daunting, and so what the outcome is may not seem like. You may not get the outcome that looks like, hey, this kid can do this thing, whereas the child, who can mimic the teacher steps to answer every single one of those questions, can do it relatively quickly, but didn't engage as deeply in that math task as the first child did, right? But from the outset, from the outside perception which child looked like they were successful in the task, right? So sometimes, I think it's being honest about all the components that we're asking of a child when we have them do them, those things mentally, being able to break them apart, and then knowing our students, right? Like knowing which child would benefit from only having to do five because five problems, well, is just as successful as 20, right? Like, if they're all repetitious, and knowing that for some of our students, being able to just write them on a whiteboard or orally do it so, like changing the modality can increase their capacity to be the best version of themselves. So sometimes I think it's us knowing what all the components are, so that we can, like, thoughtfully push in the supports, so that the students can really be the best versions of themselves. Because if they don't know how to ask for help or what, what the help options are, right? Like, we can make the safe environment, but they also need to know what their choices

Dr. Corey Drake: 13:39

are. Yeah, absolutely, that's a good point, and your example is making me think too, like, What is our goal? Right? If my goal were to understand more about student thinking, if my goal were for students to demonstrate their understanding of multiplication, if it were to be kind of to show their demonstrate their flexibility with numbers, or their understanding of the number system, right? That second student and what I'm asking them to do, let's say, I said, just do five problems, but show me all the different ways you're thinking about this. I learned a lot more about that student than I did about that first student who that first student who completed quietly and got all the answers. I still don't really know what that student understands about multiplication. So if my goal were, can you do it quickly and accurately? I do know that that student has demonstrated that competence. But often we conflate the two. We often think, oh, because that student demonstrated that competence in being quick and accurate, they must have an understanding of multiplication. They must have flexibility with numbers. They must understand our number system. And those two things don't always go together. So what can you learn about your student through what you're asking them to do, and then what do they have opportunities to make sense of through what you're asking them to do? I think are both important. Yeah.

Julie Cunningham: 15:01

Yeah, and, and a little bit like, where is their voice in the right? Like, where, where did they get to have, like, some voice and choice about, you know, maybe it's even a question of, like, I don't know, how many of these do you need? Do you think you need to do to demonstrate to me that you can right? If this is my goal, is knowing that you can multiply like, where's it end, right? What is it? What's practice and what is just wrote

Unknown: 15:33

rent. I can

Ashley O'Neil: 15:34

do it over and over and over. That gets on another teacher's skill, Julie, which is being really transparent with the students about what the ask is and why the ask is there, which then allows them to have the information they need to make choices in the classroom, because they know, oh, this is the part that matters to you. Okay, well, then can we compromise in this way? Because they understand what the point of the process, the whole project is, right? Yeah.

Julie Cunningham: 16:02

Are we have a thought or a question for ourselves on, what does this have to do with student engagement? And so I'll just, I'll throw that out there. I'm happy to take a turn at answering it, but I'll throw it out there first. And so by this, I mean what is, what is sense making or assuming students are competent, or allowing them to demonstrate ways in which they are competent to you, what does that have to do with student engagement, presuming that student engagement is something that we'd like to see in a classroom?

Dr. Corey Drake: 16:38

Yes, and like true engagement, which doesn't necessarily mean students being quiet or compliant in some way, but actually like engage with the content. I mean, I think it's critical to engagement. I think when we aren't starting with a stance of students as sense makers and students as competent, we fall back into, what are we asking students to do? What we're asking them to mimic, to be quiet, to try to figure out how I the teacher, I'm making sense of something, and try to match that right, which is a series of actions that even if students were compliant with that, like, what are they engaged with? They're engaged maybe with my thinking about something and trying to match that. But when I'm assuming students are sense makers and giving them opportunities to demonstrate their competence and make sense for themselves, then they're engaged with the content. Then they're they're in a position of having both like the opportunity and the responsibility to say, how can I make sense of this? What can I do? How does this connect to what I already know? What questions do I have? What models could I use? What can I draw on in my experiences, which are all kind of more active and engaged verbs and questions than than what we often ask students to do?

Ashley O'Neil: 18:06

Yeah, I think it also comes up with, we talked a lot about con content, but I think it also comes on the other side, where it comes to, like, if we say the behavior side of the classroom, right where, if a student is presumed that they're capable and can do this and genuinely gets believed or gets fresh chances all the time, regardless of what happened yesterday or an hour ago, they're much more likely to try because they don't think that this is a foregone conclusion, right? Like they don't assume they're going to be left out, or assume that like what happened yesterday is going to happen again and the way my teacher talk to me is going to be the way my peers now talk to me, because everybody's frustrated with me, and I know they're all frustrated with me, so why would I even try right? Like, if that teacher believes them and listens to them and gives them a chance every single time, they're going to be so much more likely to show up. Because another side of this right we've talked about this a little, is that social side. So the social dynamics in the classroom are there. I've been in classrooms. I had a classroom where the kids would all bite at a student for doing the thing that they knew the student was the teacher was going to bite at them for, right? I don't mean literal biting. I mean like snipping at them, just to be clear. And I think that sometimes students, when they show up and they think that it's fixed that who they are, the stereotype of them, or the caricature of them is set in their class, they're going to live up to that character, because what else do they have to do? Right? And if they can control the narrative about themselves by being that narrative, then that's a lot easier than trying to be vulnerable and be different and and then have all my friends and my teacher treat me just like they did yesterday. So I think if we can do that with students, and that is part of competence, they're much more likely to be vulnerable, because learning is vulnerable and it's scary. And if we want our students to be vulnerable and to be feel safe, and in that way, it it encompasses them as the whole child too. Do right like it thinks about the student who may have a bad day or may have a tough minute, or may not fit into a neat and tidy box in our classroom, like we need them to or want them to. So I think there's that social side, or the behavioral side that comes with the competence and student engagement too.

Dr. Corey Drake: 20:16

That's such a great point, because when we, when we were talking a few minutes ago, about the student who chooses the more challenging task and then realizes they need some supports, and the importance of knowing what the options are and what you can ask for and how you can ask for it right? If we don't know that, and we don't understand that there are supports we can ask for, and it is the safe environment many children have very little choice at that point except to either withdraw or to act in, act out. And so right, this idea of competence and this assumption of confidence provides options in those moments, because we all have those moments when we don't know what to do next, or when we're struggling or when we need some support, and if I don't know what those options are, I'm going to choose the only ones I know, which are often behavioral and often either withdrawing or acting out. So

Julie Cunningham: 21:17

I'm not even sure that students can show up as sense makers and demonstrate competence in the classroom where they're not supported that way. Like, how do you how do you even know like, like you said, if they can fill in a worksheet that doesn't tell me that they're a sense maker about math me, tells me that my class is quiet and that they're well behaved and that they're filling in worksheets, but I don't know if you can even have sense makers and truly students demonstrating competence if you don't give them some agency,

Dr. Corey Drake: 21:55

right? And it's about like being humans. It's about understanding children as full humans who have the same needs and requirements for learning as we do when we step into a learning situation as adults. And there are particular constraints that are brought by schools and classrooms and those structures that sometimes make this even more challenging. But fundamentally, it's understanding that children are humans who bring in experiences and ideas and are constantly making sense of their world, just like we all are. And so we can get closer both to the like humanity we want, but also the learning we want in classrooms, if we recognize that and and build on that, versus trying to control it or shut it down.

Ashley O'Neil: 22:45

It reminds me of like, family or people who've known you for a long time, or particularly knew you when you were little, and you show up and they're like, Oh, you and you're like, that hasn't been me. That version of me was like in the 1900s like that is a long time ago. That's not me anymore, right? But it can be exhausting when that's the version of you that they have fixed in your brain. And so what do you do? You kind of fall into the patterns of the people that you're with, because it's just really hard to be different when people just keep telling you who you are already, it makes me think about that. I do, I don't. I do want to also recognize and say, This is really hard to do as a teacher. This is not easy, and it is not something that I have perfected. It is something I work on every day. It's some days I do better at this than others. And one of the reasons, Corey you identified, is that the school is not meant to think this way. All the data that we collect on kids makes it really hard to think this way. Our own performance evals make it really hard to think this way. Human the way we kind of show up culturally in society, makes it really hard to think this way. How we talk for efficiency sake and meetings makes it hard to think this way. But that doesn't mean that it's it's not important to

Julie Cunningham: 23:58

keep trying well, and I think it's way more fun. I mean, isn't it way more fun to be in the classroom, like, I want to go to school and have fun as an adult, like, and I think also then your behavior issues are cut down, right? So it's like a trade off. It's like a cost benefit ratio again, right?

Unknown: 24:19

So your hard is here doing this work instead of your heart is here doing the discipline work or whatever that other heart is. Your heart is different.

Julie Cunningham: 24:29

I mean, it's all hard, but where do you want your heart to be? Like,

Dr. Corey Drake: 24:36

yeah, for sure, and no, I I don't think there's anyone who is not still trying to learn and grow and push against the systems to make this work more possible. And I think there's a lot of reasons why it's both more fun and more important and and better for learning to act and show up this. Way and bring these assumptions, and there's so many reasons why it's hard, and it's the systems and the structures and the way we probably learned ourselves and all of those pieces that so I think it's, I think it's great that you all are doing this podcast and having these opportunities, because that's the other piece. Is I think sometimes we can feel really alone in doing this work and in showing up in a classroom in a different way than maybe others around us are, or then maybe we experienced in schools ourselves. So I think it's important to know that there are people, there is there is community in trying to shift the experiences that students have in school into more equitable sense making experiences,

Ashley O'Neil: 25:48

yeah, and I think for me, the easiest time to do this has become when I'm with kids, right when I'm teaching. This is the easiest the hardest time to do this is when you're with a colleague and they're saying something or participating in a fixed mindset that you would like to not have happen in the staff meeting, in the teachers lounge and the whatever. And so this is my version of going into the teachers lounge and saying, like, hey, we can have these conversations also as adults, and that is really huge too, because it's not something you can turn on and off in your classroom. You may think you can, right? But if you're talking one way in the teacher's lounge, and you think you're talking another way in the classroom, you're not. It's, it's pervasive, and it's, it's coming out in the classroom too. This has been another episode of teach wonder. Thanks for listening. Bye.