Leaders just gotta give people authentic opportunity to develop that affective dimension in addition to content/principles to deploy. Far too often, PD is designed with a “plug’n’play” model … but we have to attend to a teacher’s readiness for implementation and self-awareness to make anything work.

Also, this teacher is taking a topic from their social studies class and bringing it to ELA (whole other topic of interest). And it just so happens this history pod ep perfectly articulates the affective dimension here: experience + understanding + skill => confidence to seize opportunity.

I’d offered tools that support the use of teaching whole books, but she was honest and said, “I couldn’t quite conceptualize that with my curric.” But creating a space where Ss can present an idea, be heard, and have it implemented? It can inspire both Ss and Ts. There’s affective dimension to that.

I think those are both wins in different ways that everyone needed, but nobody expected. But our teachers created the conditions for that learning community to develop by showing up everyday and creating the conditions for our students to feel seen and heard. More work to do, but that’s progress!

I feel like I have that exact convo with at least one student once a year and some variant of it at least once a quarter. And most verbals tools of persuasion fail; the best response is to teach in ways that connect to who they are and how they engage the world… so they can refine that common sense.

Exactly.

And the consistent denial of classrooms as human spaces that are inherently messy and full of contextual factors that fly in the face of widespread implementation of generic lessons never ceases to amaze me…

We can agree on some core principles of planning and design, but in the end we need to appreciate contextual nuances that demand some flexibility and autonomy. These efforts to compensate for developing teachers with rigid curricula is folly.

I could go on (and on) about that, but I think the reality is that teachers need autonomy to make decisions that will make curriculum sing in their classrooms … which is diametrically opposed to the idea that there’s some universal magic bullet curriculum to be found.

For example, you can dismiss “culturally responsive teaching” as progressive DEI mumbo jumbo but if you’re teaching in one of the 40ish% of elem schools that don’t offer recess, the hook there is irrelevant at best and trolling at worst. So a T would need to tweak that lesson to make it viable.

Navigating the practical mechanics of lesson planning is vital for moving from novice to expert as a teacher.

But what a lot of the discourse about this (and, surprise surprise, just about any social media debate) lacks is attention to nuance, especially with respect to balance and context.

What I see in that lesson plan is an age-appropriate guided inquiry that has opportunities for Ss expression and opens with a hook (albeit trivial) that attempts to connect to Ss lived experiences.

I love all those things.

The CogSci purist crew goes out of their way to denounce those principles.

This point is also really impt: my degrees are in info systems/human computer interaction. One of the most eye-opening assignments I ever had was to mock up a system to make the DMV more efficient — the challenges were way more social than technical. We need to embrace that instead of ignoring it.