Process over Product

A Conversation between Agency by Design Oakland Teacher Fellows

Learning is messy and beautiful and we’re here for all of it. At this point in our teacher fellowship we’re handing over the microphone and witnessing teachers’ journeys. Check out this conversation between Fatimah Salahuddin and Kara Fleshman, two Oakland teachers in our teacher fellowship, who are at the beginning of their independent inquiry work.

Emergent Inquiry Questions

““Who am I as a maker-centered learning teacher?” 

“How is distance learning shifting and destroying some of these maker-centered learning strategies? And how am I bringing my special sauce to these different strategies?

Fatimah Salahuddin, ELA & Ethnic Studies Teacher, Fremont High School, Oakland Unified School District”

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““How can I create independent work that isn’t an added burden on families and is truly fun, enriching, challenging, and inspiring?”  

“I have been trying to learn how to become tech savvy. How do I create the resources my students need?

Kara Fleshman, STEAM teacher, Lazear Elementary School”

Student Agency is at the core of our work. And what we envision for students we must cultivate for the educators! In order to design for agency in the classroom educators need to know what it looks like, what it feels like, and why it’s worth it. The path to agency is different for everyone but it follows a similar structure—an inquiry cycle.

Agency by Design Oakland uses a multi-pronged approach to design for Teacher Agency. We use research on maker-centered learning to support teachers in their pedagogical understanding. We invite teachers to present and showcase their work to cultivate their leadership as educational visionaries. And we use an inquiry cycle for teachers to be in charge of their own classroom action research.

We help teachers lean into the design skills they already have but to slow down and be reflective about what they’re doing and why. We lead teachers through the inquiry process of defining their inquiry, prototyping a tool, testing and documenting in the classroom, looking at student work, and reflecting and refining their inquiry. We support this work with a community of peers, a coach, as well as grants for classroom materials.

Reflection

How do you cultivate learner agency? At this point in the school year it’s common to pull back some of the scaffolds and encourage your learners to do the heavy lifting. It might look like students engaging in a complex interdisciplinary unit and they’ve written their own research question, or it could be more basic—like having students lead the class routines or asking them to write a paragraph without the sentence frames you usually provide. 

Resources

• Agency by Design Research Project 

• Book: Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds

• What are Thinking Routines? 

• A Picture of Practice: Redirecting Authority 

• A Picture of Practice: Letting Go of Power

• A Picture of Practice: Student Voice & Choice

Building Empathy During Distance Learning

By Brooke Toczylowski, Co-Director, Agency by Design Oakland

Teaching is designing, and building empathy is core to the design process. Like planning lessons or engaging in ongoing assessment, Empathy Hacks should be a core part of one’s teaching practice. 

This past week teacher fellows with the Agency by Design Oakland Fellowship have been engaging in one such Empathy Hack. After looking closely at and considering “What are the Parts Purposes & Complexities of distance learning?” the educators are now using the Think Feel Care thinking routine to guide them in interviewing a student or family member on their experience of the system of distance learning. 

In a team meeting with Community Day School, educator Michael Gebreslassie shared that he chose to do this by asking one of his students, Jared, to draw his experience of distance learning. Michael told us that Jared wanted the drawing to look dark in order to represent how he feels, and that he’s bored by the same thing day after day. 

"Distance learning is the same screen and same window, every day.”

Jared, a student at Community Day School, an alternative public school in Oakland, visually represents his experience of distance learning.

Using the drawing, as well as their prior experiences with Jared (with whom all had worked), the team was asked to take on his perspective and consider the following questions: 

Think: How does this person understand this system (distance learning), and their role within it? 

Feel: What is this person’s emotional response to the system, and to their position within in? 

Care: What are this person’s values, priorities, or motivations with regard to the system? What is important to this person? 

The educators shared that Jared is a “why person,” someone who needs to understand the purpose behind an assignment or experience. But during distance learning, where the purpose of many activities are elusive, maybe he’s not sure it matters. Educator Elisabeth Barnett imagined Jared saying, “Does distance learning matter? Is this feeding into what I can do with my future? “ Another team member, Trey Keeve, the English teacher and also a poet, took it to another level, and imagined this student’s experience in the first person. Listen to hear Trey perform his incredibly moving piece:  

Transcript: “I am an artist and I have been cut off from everything that inspires and motivates me. I am a tactile learner and now my hands only touch computer keys. I like to paint trees at times, but now I can only see the ones from my window. The window controls what I see, as does my computer. I don’t have the freedom of fingers to feel, the freedom of eyes to see beyond these windows. I am an artist suffocated, cut off, uninspired. To remain in this place. And yet I am stuck. I would rather fail than succeed in this. I valued in-person education more than I thought. I took it for granted. I need to get outside, I need to feel the wind on my skin. I need to see my friends laugh in person. I need to hear their sounds as they manifest and not as they are digitized and sent through wires. I need to be in a classroom surrounded by tacky posters, art supplies, and people.” 

After a deep breath to take in each others’ reflections and appreciate the deep empathy work they had just engaged in, the Community Day School team started brainstorming.  

• They envisioned care packages of art materials for students to express themselves! 

• They imagined ecological projects in the park examining and drawing specimens!

• They conjured up ideas for interdisciplinary Math, Science & English projects using Design Thinking!

The zoom mood slowly shifted—the educators felt lighter, and ready, and eager.

Because Empathy leads to Hope. 

“I really didn’t want to be in another zoom today. But I didn’t know this is what I needed.” Teacher, Community Day School 

Empathy building is a part of exploring complexity, one of three capacities in the Agency by Design framework, which supports cultivating a sensitivity to design and ultimately—maker empowerment. Exploring Complexity is about systems thinking, including looking at which players are involved in a given system and understanding different perspectives within it. Learn more about the framework here. 

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Empathy Hacks 

Think Feel Care Thinking Routine: Choose a learner whose perspective you want to explore. Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and quietly reflect on paper. Consider how you want to organize your thinking—stream of consciousness, three columns, a concept map? When you’re done, be sure to notice your biases, what assumptions you may have made, and what you’re now curious to go learn more about. 

Lawrence Teng, a 19’ - 20’ Agency by Design Oakland Teacher Fellow, holds up a poster he just screenprinted of the Think, Feel, Care thinking routine. Download a PDF of this design below.

Shadow a Student: Join a student on their zoom schedule for the day. Inspired by SchoolRetool.org.

Class Activity/Assessment: Invite learners to draw a picture of their distance learning experience and share out. Inspired by Community Day School educator, Michael Gebreslassie. 

Interview a Student, Parent or Guardian. Give them a call, use a series of text messages, or drop by their home for a socially distant chat.  

Community Walks. Invite (and stipend!) students to design and organize a day of professional development for students where the learners lead workshops, walks, and discussions within their own communities. Oakland International High School is a leader in student-led community walks. Learn more here. 

And here are few more of our favorite Empathy Tools from the Design Thinking world:

The d.school’s Liberatory Design Cards go deep into mindsets—they’re an essential tool with a free download. Use Ideo’s Travel Pack cards for creative ideas to get you thinking outside the box, like “Try it Yourself,” where you gain empathy by trying out someone’s favorite activity or hobby for a week. And don’t miss out on Lesley-Ann Noel’s “The Designer’s Critical Alphabet,” a comprehensive vocab lesson.

A Letter from our Co-Directors

“We can’t do it alone. No individual alone can transform our schools into places where all children get what they need every day.” Elena Aguilar, The Art of Coaching Teams 

In this most unusual of school years, Agency by Design Oakland has adjusted our fellowship and organization to meet the needs of the times. 

The first announcement is that our leadership structure has changed to a more distributed model. Brooke Toczylowski, formerly Executive Director, and Paula Mitchell, formerly Fellowship Director, are now Co-Directors of Agency by Design Oakland. Both are excited to lead the organization together through this extraordinary time of change and opportunity. 

We believe in collaborative governance structures that distribute leadership to a team. Seen here is our Fellowship Leadership Team, which designs, facilitates and coaches our Oakland teacher fellowship. From left to right: Paula Mitchell, Teacher on Special Assignment at Grass Valley Elementary School, Alia Ghabra, Humanities teacher at Elmhurst United, Susan Wolf, Teaching Artist, Ilya Pratt, Director of the Design+Make+Build Program at Park Day School, and Brooke Toczylowski, Instructional Coach at Oakland International High School.

“If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together. “

unknown origin

Secondly, as the current conditions have taxed even the most resilient of us, we have shifted the Oakland fellowship from a focus on individuals to a focus on teams. We know that maker-centered learning pedagogy holds the promise of creating both more equitable and engaging learning environments and we need this now more than ever. We decided to shift our focus to teams in order to help foster conditions for sustainability, spreadability and success at sites. To this end, we are also intentionally engaging site leaders for the first time in the fellowship experience. Principals and school leaders will join their teams for three experiences throughout the year. This work is supported by our participation and collaboration with Maker Ed’s Making Spaces Program, a national network of hubs supporting schools to integrate making.

The message of collaboration, joy and healing that we set as the themes for our ‘20-’21 fellowship seemed to resonate with our applicants. Upon opening our application process in June, our leadership team was immediately struck by the thoughtfulness and creativity of the applications and their stated desire to be in community with one another. At this particular point in history, humans desire to be in fellowship with one another and teachers, who are often stuck in the silos of their classroom, are realizing how much they need each other to meet the demands of distance learning.

In addition to figuring it out together, our latest group of fellows are dedicated to bringing culturally responsive pedagogy and equity through making into their practice. Perhaps because of this, or because we are in such extraordinary times, our fellowship is one of the most diverse we’ve ever had, with the largest number of second year fellows to date. We are thrilled to have so many returnees and are looking forward to the creation of richer experiences with the entire cohort. We are committed to discovering what student agency looks like during distance learning to ensure that all are cared for and engaged during this challenging time. We will update you on this work as the year progresses; below is a snapshot of our cohort makeup.

We wish you health, happiness, and even joy during this difficult time. 

In Community,

Paula & Brooke

P.S. Show Up for Democracy- VOTE!

TEAM WONDER: A Case Study in Equity During Distance Learning

By Julia Carson, 11th Grade English Teacher at Oakland International High School & a 2019 - 2020 Agency by Design Oakland Teacher Fellow. The mission of Oakland International High School is to provide a quality alternative education for recently arrived immigrant students in English language acquisition and in preparation for college.

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TEAM WONDER: A CASE STUDY IN EQUITY DURING DISTANCE LEARNING

This past spring, a few weeks into distance learning, I was talking with 11th grade student Alexander, who, to my utter surprise commented, “I like this, Miss. I’m getting more attention now.” I thought, “WHAT? How could ANYONE LIKE distance learning work on a highly rigorous essay writing project?”

But if anything, the move to distance learning has forced me to be a more equitable teacher. Freed from the constraints of a classroom, where everyone sits in the same chair, and works at the same sized table, and has the physical tools necessary to participate on more or less equal footing, I’ve had to hone in on each and every individual student’s current learning needs. 

In speaking with students during this time I can see that the inequities that typically camouflage insidiously in a physical classroom have become cripplingly obvious. Students with functional educations in their native language are comfortable and confident in their innate right to ask for what they need. They feel empowered to call and text a teacher as questions arise. But students with more interrupted formal educations, meaning they have potentially missed a year or more of school, have learned over their lives that they don’t have a right to ask for what they need, or to speak up when they don’t understand. They have learned to stay quiet and obedient, and to not attract attention. When questions arise during distance learning, these students are rapidly disengaging. Distance learning = inequities revealed in all their full force. In an OpEd in the NY Times, “What We Lose When We Go From the Classroom to Zoom,” Karen Strassler writes “When we pretend that inequities don’t exist, we allow them to persist unchallenged.” So, I knew I had to try something different. 

11th grade student, Wilman, gives me a FaceTime fist bump after our long meeting, discussing how to best prepare for his daily meetings with volunteer, Leah.

Eleventh grade at Oakland International, where 100% of our students are newcomer English Language Learners, is when students learn to write a real argumentative essay for the first time. In my English class this is the overarching driving content goal, all year long. Being able to organize your thinking and effectively communicate in written form is crucial. When school closures hit, due to COVID-19, my students had almost finished reading the novel Wonder and were gearing up to write their essay. When distance learning began I wondered, should I give up? Create a new curriculum better suited to online platforms? 

If I gave up, would I be betraying my students’ needs? This was surely foundational content knowledge. I vacillated for the first two weeks, unsure of how to balance what was possible to do in the face of changing challenges of distance teaching. But, how do I best serve them? This was an isolated crisis of conscience. At the time, I was only getting engagement from about 35% of my 100 students. Was it ok that only 35% of them could do the assigned work, well enough, independently? It was achingly frustrating, as I spoke with more and more students, and saw them sinking into at-home lethargy and depression. 

Based on the emphatic support of the rest of the 11th grade team of teachers, and my own hopes, prayers, and faith in students’ capacity, I determined to figure it out and move forward.

After multiple failures, I accepted that my students needed help--real help--way beyond Ms. Julia help. I considered the resources at my disposal and contacted a variety of different people to build what eventually become TEAM WONDER: a team of ten educators and volunteers. The 11th graders and I are very grateful for their ingenuity, kindness, and help, without which none of this work would have been possible. 

One of Team Wonder’s weekly check-in / support meetings in the spring, 2020.

These are the marvelous people who made up Team Wonder:

• Ellen Chamberlin is a paraeducator at OIHS. She lives in Oakland with housemates and really misses hugging.

• Irene Cocco is currently finishing her Americorps service at OIHS and will be returning as a Newcomer assistant in the fall. She lives in Oakland and is constantly inspired by the OIHS community.

• Momo Gomez is an AmeriCorps team member finishing out her career at OIHS after several years of volunteer service. She is a board director of an education company based in Kanagawa, Japan, and loves working with English language learners from all over the globe.

• Basha Millhollen, PhD, OUSD volunteer, is a retired former teacher, administrator, educational researcher. Her career began as a teacher's aide for Migrant Education and ended as a CA school district assistant superintendent. 

• Carol Badran, OUSD volunteer, retired after two decades from the San Francisco Dept of Public Health, and recently from teaching health at City College of San Francisco.  Her passion has always been working with youth.

• Alison Seevak has volunteered at OIHS for the past four years. An enrichment teacher in the Albany Unified School District, she is the proud single mom of a high school junior.

• Leah Brumer, OIHS volunteer, is a French translator, the granddaughter of immigrants, daughter of a retired Oakland teacher, graduate of Oakland High School and mother of  graduates of Oakland Tech and Berkeley High School. 

• Adam Segal is an OUSD volunteer, as well as a former and future math teacher. He lives in the OIHS neighborhood.

• Karla Maldonado is a paraeducator at OIHS. 

This team was an amazing group of humans, but they hadn’t taught an argumentative essay writing project, so every step of team work with students needed support and clear direction. I designed a spreadsheet, with a separate sheet for each volunteer’s student caseload to coordinate and communicate progress (or lack of progress) with every single student in the grade. Then, I wrote and designed a library of resources to serve Team Wonder. Documents like “Troubleshooting Problems with Writing a Claim,” “Example Introductions” or “Chapters We Read and Chapters We Skipped.” 

Coordinating Team Wonder’s work has meant using a Google Sheet to communicate and keep track of who we’ve worked with, when, and on what. It also meant taking the time to teach some volunteers how to use google docs for the very first time!

I determined that every Monday, we would have a meeting to check-in, question, comment, brainstorm, review, change course if necessary, give feedback, and share best practices, as they evolved in these new waters.

We learned how to help students set norms around how to prepare for their meetings with volunteers (set an alarm clock, identify a quiet place to ‘meet’, have a snack beforehand, let the people you live with know that you’ll be unavailable for a half an hour, get a glass of water, get your materials, make sure the time consistently repeats, make sure your cell or internet signal works in that quiet place.) 

I decided that, given that students would receive the attention they needed, that the most important thing was that all students were reading, and practicing argumentative writing skills. So, if lower literacy students needed differentiated assignments, that was absolutely fine. Since more advanced students could do much of their writing work independently, I created consistent, daily ‘office hours’ on Zoom, when any student could always access me to ask a question or get help. 

For students who (for so many reasons) had disengaged with school, we reached out via text and phone twice per week, determined to keep messages short, to the point, and positive, simply re-inviting students to get help, and asking a brief non-school related question. Each week, we communicated with parents via a brief text, if we hadn’t heard from unresponsive students, to please pass on the message / invitation. And slowly, slowly, slowly but surely, they came back and re-engaged. Not every single student, but 80% of them. 

“When my LOWEST LITERACY SIFE student is asking her helper to keep reading for an hour together, I want to know more about why? What are they doing together that’s so different from what happens in my classroom? ”

Because of Team Wonder we were able to gauge more specifically what each student needs to learn best and where they’re at now. I’ve always been reluctant to let go of having the same expectation for all students; in the classroom I would expect “All students will write every part of the essay.” But now my expectation has changed to “All students will learn how to order their ideas and write argumentatively.”

The question remains, of course, how to differentiate this process better in the classroom? And how to do it when I’m the only adult helper around! Might it be possible for us to bring virtual volunteers with us back to the classroom, in some form? 

I play with group reading protocols all year long. But the reading process currently taking place has made me question what I’m doing. When my LOWEST LITERACY SIFE student is asking her helper to keep reading for an hour together, I want to know more about why? What are they doing together that’s so different from what happens in my classroom? I know they’re moving much more slowly, at her pace, and stopping to talk more, but what else? I’ve let go of a lot of one-on-one meetings with students, and as they happen with other helpers, wonderful things are taking place that I want to know more about...How can I best gather, and notice these important observations from Team Wonder?

I’d designed a tool I call the “Exit Interview” to uncover and document what students have found most helpful in all this. After all, it’s quite possible that this approach may be called upon again. I’ll be using student feedback to focus our reflection with the Team about what has worked best. What have we learned about how to best deliver the literacy support students need in a time like this?

““I think talking on the phone helped me a lot. Even though I stayed at home by myself, I feel like you are always supporting me and helping me. It’s always better than texting or email. Phoning and zooming are 100% better.” OIHS student”

Some excerpts from student “Exit Interviews”:

“I feel proud because I have made a big achievement. It was good working with my helper because she helped me a lot and I had fun.”

“I think talking on the phone helped me a lot. Even though I stayed at home by myself, I feel like you are always supporting me and helping me. It’s always better than texting or email. Phoning and zooming are 100% better.”

“I am thankful for the help. I wish for more help.”

“Ms Alison answered my questions and explained a lot of words to me. It helped me feel calm.”

“I like it when it is just the two of us...I used to have fear about asking for help when I was at school. But now when my helper talks with me she understands how to help me do the paragraph. I am not afraid now.”

“It was really great to be able to have someone to talk to when I was confused and also learn new things from.”

Julia is about to joyfully begin her 10th year of teaching high school. A returned Peace Corps Volunteer, she originally hails from New York City, NY. Julia is a voracious reader, cook, traveler, mushroom gatherer, Christmas carol singer, beloved friend, sister & daughter, and soon to be first-time mom!

Culturally Responsive Teacher Making

CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHER MAKING

An Ignite Talk by Lawrence Teng, a high school math teacher at MetWest High School in Oakland, shares his inquiries around culturally responsive pedagogy, how he’s been influenced by the work of Zaretta Hammond, and how he’s designed his own thinking routines for students to become co-creators of knowledge.

As educators we believe that a good question is at the root of learning. In the Agency by Design Oakland fellowship we support and value the journey each teacher takes while creating a question unique to their teaching practice. A teacher inquiry is a question that becomes an anchor for the work that follows. 

Lawrence’s Inquiry question: How do my students process information cognitively and how does this relate to cultural throughlines and how can I use this to better help my students learn? 

An Ignite Talk by Lawrence Teng, a high school math teacher at MetWest High School in Oakland, shares his inquiries around culturally responsive pedagogy.

Lawrence closes his ignite talk by asking,  

“How can YOU be a culturally responsive teacher maker?” 

We ask: How might you experiment with the co-creation of thinking routines with on-line teaching and learning?  We would love to hear the stories of what you are trying and how your students are surprising you in the moments you have shifted the power, inviting them into creating authentic assessments. Tag us on Twitter or Instagram @AbDOakland.

For more videos from the collection documenting our Virtual event: Equity in the Making before during and after distance learning

The monthly fellowship meetings of 2019-20, before shelter-in-place you could find us thinking together in various groups.  The documentation below captures some moments leading up to Lawrence’s final inquiry and ignite talk. 

Four Fellows standing in front of a project asking, What is a System? From the December 2019 Expo. Upper left clockwise: Lawrence Teng, Math at MetWest. Jonathan Lazatin, Science at MetWest, Satoshi Suga, Science at McClymonds HS. Linh Linh Trinh, Math at MetWest.

After the work of sharing our teacher inquiries and process it is the casual conversations that are the connective tissue for transformational change. It is these conversational moments that make us each feel less isolated and more joyful, while making and playing.

Questions that Lawrence was asking at our mid-year expo were looking for evidence of metacognition, the awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes. The interactive display engaged viewers with questions about their own thinking about math equations. Part of the work in the Agency by Design Oakland fellowship values the practice of making learning visible.

How are we telling the story of teaching and learning and how are we inviting students into the process?

Lawrence Teng, teaches math to close to 40% of the whole student body. In his classes, he knows the names of every student and has consistent contact with many of my students’ parents. The school’s emphasis on a small tight-knit community is strong.

Met West HS, Oakland is one of forty public high schools around the country pioneering a model of internship-based education MetWest's 9th-12th graders travel to the campus from all corners of Oakland. The school's approach to learning is grounded in a commitment to educate one student at a time, in a tight-knit community of peers, family, teachers, and community mentors -- utilizing resources inside and outside the classroom. Students at MetWest are 50 percent Latino, 30 percent African American, seven percent White, and 13 percent Asian American. Seventy percent of the school's students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.