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ChangED
ChangED is an educator based podcast for Pennsylvania teachers to learn more about the PA STEELS Standards and science in general. It is hosted by Andrew Kuhn and Patrice Semicek.
ChangED
Science For All Learners
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If "science time" in your self-contained classroom means the same weather chart and life cycle unit on repeat, this one's for you. Educational consultant Karri Kessler joins us to explore what rigorous, accessible science instruction can actually look like for autistic support and intensive support classrooms — and why comfort routines can accidentally replace real learning. We dig into Pennsylvania's alternate assessment (PASA), the DLM system, and the STEELS shift, while keeping the focus on what matters most: scientific practices, questioning, and protecting access for every learner — no matter how they communicate.
Want to send us a show idea or just say hi? Email us at: thechangedpodcast@gmail.com!
Awkward Fun And Guest Setup
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to Change Ed. Change time. Change Ed. Your favorite podcast that you turned on and decided to listen to this episode. Right now. I am your one of your I am a. I have hosted I am a host with Capital H, Andrew Kuhn, Education Consultant from Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. And here with me is Womp Womp, Patrice. Sadness.
SPEAKER_02I don't, I don't, I'm not like a showman. Like you make it a thing every time. My name is Patrice Subjek. I'm out of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, and I'm also an educational consultant.
SPEAKER_04And we have with us Tony Marabito from Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit. You think after three seasons that the intro will be a little less awkward?
SPEAKER_02No. Every time.
SPEAKER_04Every time.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I thought you were going to say 1981.
SPEAKER_01No, you're not that old, are you, Tony?
SPEAKER_02No, Tony's significantly younger than us.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, we have a as we're continuing on our this year.
SPEAKER_02I feel really bad for people, like in this season, how all of season three is going to be you trying to make amends for edging Tony and I out of being a host on this podcast because we're recording them all around the same time as my hizi fit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well that's every day. So it's not because that's not clear.
SPEAKER_02Wow. But you don't get to talk to me like that.
SPEAKER_01HR, we are in the the building with HR. So no surprise to any of our listeners, season three. We decided that we were as good as Smartless and that we were gonna have surprise guests that come on. It has been an awesome journey. And today Hey, name two of the hosts from Smartless Jason Bateman and Dax Prescott. Nox Shepard.
SPEAKER_02Shepard Dax Shepard, see? No, he has his own.
SPEAKER_01He's been on the Oh, the other guy with the the thing. And he's oh the guy, Will Arnett. Boom.
Meet Carrie Kessler
SPEAKER_02Which one are you? I think you're the Sean Hayes of the group. I love him.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, I would like to learn more about your guest.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna delete all his stuff.
SPEAKER_01Gosh, our poor guest. She's used to it. I would like to learn more about your guest, another person we've never met before. You really stressed out hard finding these guests, finding people who are homegrown. Could you introduce us to your guest?
SPEAKER_02Our guest is one of my favorite humans, Carrie Kessler. She has worked at MCIU for ever and a day. And when I first started at the IU, Kessler, we have two Carries in our office, so if I call her KK, that's why. But Carrie was my like autism CLM coach when I was teaching in an autistic support classroom here at the IU. So I've known Carrie from day one of my MCIU adventure. And then I got the pleasure of working with Carrie as a TAC training consulting specialist and focusing on math and ELA. And Carrie has been an amazing advocate and an amazing resource in the world of autism. So I'm going to let Carrie introduce herself and tell us a little bit more about who she is. Do I need to after that? I know.
SPEAKER_03It was really pretty good. Thanks, Carrie. Yes, so I'm Carrie Kessler, an educational consultant here at the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. I have been at the IU for 23 years, first as a teacher in autistic support, and then as a TAC training consulting specialist under the Pennsylvania Department of Education Special Education Initiative of Autism. Wow. Which no longer exist because we now have pillars.
SPEAKER_04Much easier to say.
SPEAKER_03The pillars are wonderful. Just don't ask me which one I'm under because I can't remember. It's too new. And I'm old, and that will change as well.
SPEAKER_01So you being old will change or the pillars will change. Wow.
SPEAKER_03Both. You're going to let them talk to you like that? I am going to let them talk to me that way because I think I'm already reversing, you know, when you yell about your parents acting like they're teenagers. I think I've hit it. And I'm old, but not that old. Yeah, but they're loving it.
SPEAKER_02So I invited Carrie today to talk about. We we're going to have some conversations, hopefully, around what does science look like in an autistic support classroom, or what does it look like in an intensive support classroom? Because we do know that there's some things coming out. I think we just got an email saying that there's new essential content for the I forget what it's called, for the PASA.
SPEAKER_03So in talking to Patrice for today, those of you listening who know about complex kiddos, whether they're autistic support, life skills, multi-disabled, what we've been doing at the state, patent, and IUTAC level is talking to teachers and administrators about the dynamic learning map or the DLM. In the COVID year of 2020, we adopted DLM to be our alternative assessment platform. So the PASA is from DLM. There are a lot of things associated with that DLM website in terms of instructional resources and, you know, just thinking about educating our more complex learners. We've spent a good bit of time talking about ELA and math, but they have redone the SEALs standards. And so what will happen in 2027 is there'll be an updated part to the DLM science. And they're working through everything now. There's things out now, but of course, you you need to have people out there using the materials, doing some work, testing out the assessment. So that's that's where we live a little bit with science at the moment.
DLM PASA Updates And Resources
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's still relatively new. And the interesting thing for us to consider as we're talking about steels is oftentimes we target the gen ed population. And we tend to forget that we have to shift our instruction for students who have more complex needs or who have learning support needs and things like that. And so I invited Carrie here so we could have like some really cool conversations about what could science look like, what should it look like. And it doesn't necessarily mean reducing the content. It means providing access, giving them steps to get them to the spot in which we want them to be at in terms of their science learning.
SPEAKER_01So now naturally, my mind is going to Universal Design for Learning because we've recently recorded a podcast talking about UDL. But I think also that seems like a very natural spot because, like you said, okay, we planned for the majority, but what about all of our other students who are also learners and who also want to understand the world better and to be challenged? What does that look like? So that's where my mindset went with this. And and from your experience, do you also see that kind of a parallel, or this is kind of a planning for all to get into steals and learning?
SPEAKER_03I think we have a ton of work to do when it comes to steals and our complex kiddos. And part of the reason is that in a lot of our more self-contained programs, whether it's autism or autistic support or not, we're spending a lot of time in one-to-one instruction. And so it's not leaving us time to get to everything. And by everything, I mean even having a rigorous ELA literacy program running a math program. So you're not going to see steals, you're not going to see a lot of social studies because we're spending all day just moving kids out of one-to-one situations. So in the DLM work, what you'll notice if you dive in there is that as they're looking at the standards that they aligned to, they're making links back to ELA and math. So that as we get into talking to teachers about DLM, about the steals portion, hopefully we can start helping them say, oh, well, that's also this concept of literacy or this concept of math, like patterns, things of that nature. So I think that that will help with that discussion. The other thing I would say is when I'm exploring those steels, they're called essential elements in the DLM. What they do is they take and reduce in depth and breadth certain standards. There are less steel standards than in math and ELA because of the complexity of steels. They talk about, and I thought this was really interesting, they have science standards of practice that they embedded in DLM. And I don't have them all memorized. I know the first one is questioning. And I remember that one because in the literature that you look at, they're embedding the other seven scientific practices within the materials. They haven't embedded questioning in there. Nonetheless, they want to do that. So science isn't just something like, oh, well, we'll talk about some life cycles. We're not calling it that. So we're gonna do the butterflies and we're gonna do the plants. Every year for 10 years. Every year for 10 years. What is that? That makes us feel better. Like, oh, I got to science. I did it. I did it as a classroom teacher. It's what I knew or what I thought I could do to quote, fit it in. So they're trying to, I think, alleviate some of that where when you delve in and you use some of those resources, you're gonna be able to work with kids at different levels and get in some of those higher to me level thinking. Yeah. Remember, we used to talk about Webb's depth of knowledge, the D-O-K.
Questioning And Science Practices
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. But to your point, like I remember being in the autistic support classes, and I was more focused on getting them to even recognize an image. Not I wasn't getting them to think outside of the box or even focus on science stuff. And we always did the butt because we could bring the caterpillars in and we could watch them turn into butterflies, and occasionally we would have eggs hatching. Like it was those kinds of things which are fun, but not really deving into the science. And what I do like about what you were saying is that the questioning, I like that it's not embedded in because if I'm talking about science, the way that we're doing science with steels, is the questioning should be happening all the time. The teachers should be asking questions, the kids should be asking questions. So I kind of like that it's not embedded in because that's just something that should be universal across the I was gonna say the questioning piece should be tied into ELA and math too.
SPEAKER_04The last math training I was in, they did a notice and wonder and a math problem. And I was like, my mind was blown because I didn't know that could happen. You know why are we not doing that in in every subject, especially with these kiddos that learn so much differently? They're gonna naturally have questions, right? So where's the time to allow for all that to happen too?
SPEAKER_03I heard once several years ago, and I don't know where, if it I was at a training or from somebody that when kids are young and you're raising, I've raised two boys, they ask all the questions, right? The why, it's Ken Robinson.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's who it is. All of that. And you know, as parents, you're like, oh my gosh, can we get past that stage? And then we enter our kids into education, kindergarten, first, second grade, public, private, and we just school it out of them. Oh, do we ever, right? And so I've raised two kids without disabilities, one who he always asked why. And he would have behavior at times because it wasn't because I said so. You didn't respond to that, right? Like, you know, well, why do I have to do this? Well, this is your morning work. Well, it's boring. Who got the email or the phone call that night?
unknownI did.
SPEAKER_03So, but it is true, you're right, about thinking about how do we keep questioning our kids, but how do we teach low incidence students to question back? Yes. What does that mean? My three-year-old asked me that. And I was like, wait, what's happening right now?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So things like that.
SPEAKER_04And for every kid, that's gonna be different too. What you expect for one student to question might be completely different for another. I came from an elementary school where we had two intensive support classrooms and two autism support classrooms out in Muellerburg and in Reading. And first of all, they were my favorite classes to visit. But God bless all the teachers in there because they are they are saints. But listening and and and kind of following along with their lessons, like sometimes you're just trying to get through whatever they're going through at the moment. And it's less about questioning or or even the math standard that you're covering that day, you know? So they just have a special place for sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and it's providing, and then how do you provide the access when you talk about doing anything, whether it's the steals, the ELA, the math, as you're alluding to Tony? How are they communicating? So my son asked, Well, I don't understand that, or what does that mean, mom? Right? How do we provide the access through their assistive technology?
SPEAKER_02When they can't, when they can't physically, or I could see it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it might be through gesturing or whatever the case may be. Or their behavior. Right.
SPEAKER_02Right. Or yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03We talk in some literacy circles. Our colleague, Andrew, Patrice and I, Julie Ortleb, she talks a lot about comprehensive literacy for all the work of Karen Erickson and some other people. And they talk in some of that work when you're thinking about scheduling and having like blocks of time. So it's not necessarily like this is Steele's time or this is this time. So you can have a little bit of an easier flow for what you just said, Tony. Like some days you're like, well, I thought this was gonna go this way. And Andrew's under the table. Patrice is trying to exit the classroom, right? And Tony's sitting like just the cherub that he is, ready to be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But, you know, and we've all been there. And even in general education classrooms, you know, you you have the days where as teachers, as just humans, where it all goes right and sometimes it all goes to the crapper.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I think I really liked about what you and I were doing back when I was in the autistic support classroom was we were talking about how can I, to your point, chunk my day. And what I think is really important for us to continue to to think about and to learn about is how can I use science and social studies to teach ELA and math. Because I can study a phenomenon and I have to read about it, I have to write about it, I can do some math to like chart it or graph it or all of those things. And I think that if we can shift a little bit from, I just remember I'm my brain is going to how many classrooms did we go into, KK, that had weather charts? And that's all the science was was a weather chart. We track the weather for the day. And they were like, well, that with that, we just did science during circle. And that's that's that is, yes, data collection, but it's not science, understanding why the clouds are in the sky and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03I think we need definitions of what is instruction and what is just tracking goals. Yeah. So what we see a lot in different classrooms as consultants, I believe, is I'm sitting as the teacher with you, Tony, and I am drilling practicing your IEP goals. So you have a decoding goal, you have a multiple meaning word goal. So maybe I can pull in some steels words, you know, for that, things like that. That's not teaching. Those things find themselves on an IEP because they're skills you don't have. And there has to be teaching.
SPEAKER_02And there's skills that you need to access the education. That's where I think if we can shift the language. And that's where I'm with the GIEP stuff, the gifted stuff, same thing. I need these skills to be able to access different curriculum and different learning. So if we can I love that. Carrie, I'm stealing it.
SPEAKER_03I met with a friend and colleague. Her name's Liz Maurer. Shameless plug. She has business data, makes the difference. Her and her husband have raised two children. One is a, I think she's probably about 26, their daughter with a disability. And Liz formerly worked for the Pennsylvania Autism Initiative doing the intensive teaching VB map work. When her and her husband got involved, and I forget the story, with Essential for Living, it's EFL. It's another program that's ABA BB based. But we had this conversation yesterday about EFL. But she was saying something to my R colleague, Cassie and I, and she said, it takes time, but do we look at our class and look at each student and say, is their program the most relevant for them? And I wrote it down. I was like, Liz, I'm stealing it. Because she's exactly right. But it doesn't happen overnight. So in the context of picking those literacy, math, steals type targets along with their behavior or social, emotional targets. What is most relevant to the kid? And when you're talking, Patrice, about how do you combine them? Yeah, how do you look at what they need to learn in literacy and math and science andor social studies? Because that might be what's going to be relevant for their life. Not so much just pulling out these skills and knowing that yes, we do need to learn to decode or we need early numeracy skills. Can we subitize? Can we, you know, use a number line and things like that? Absolutely. But how does that help? Yeah. How do you incorporate that to weather?
SPEAKER_02How is that going to help them be successful adults?
Teaching Through Science And Social Studies
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I think when you said relevant, relevant to that individual person, student, and their success moving forward and throughout the years, right? Because what might be relevant to Patrice is not going to be the same. She's way more advanced than Andrew's. So we have to we have to there's a theme here on this podcast. But we have to make sure that we you're spot on. The big idea, the big goal for them is gonna look completely different. We just have to make sure we're hitting that. And if we can tie those standards in there, I think we're doing okay.
SPEAKER_03Right. And what you said too, Patrice, about you know, like the chunking. So, you know, you can chain things. It's a applied behavioral analysis method or strategy, right? You can forward chain, you can backward chain. I think about your work, Patrice, in particular, with backwards design. How do we think about what kids need at 22 and backward down? Because I think that would help us as well. And then you make things more relevant if you can do some of that work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, on that mindset, I will say that from my perspective, the new steel standards were designed in such a way of like, let's move this along progressively. And I think one of the challenges earlier we talked about the butterfly, you know, that we're all experiencing the butterfly multiple times in our in our education.
SPEAKER_00Not in rainbows.
SPEAKER_01In rainbows, but we'll know in a very short matter of time, a couple of years, whether or not someone has actually adopted steels. Because if we were to go into a school district, anyone, and they were to see we're still doing butterflies, and that hasn't happened because it was intentionally chunked. It was intentionally grouped together. So it was like in middle school this should happen. Not specifically sixth grade, do this. Because I think what we people were finding was okay, yep, that butterfly works here, but it also works in seventh grade and eighth grade and ninth grade, and you know, and we kept doing it. And so that's the the beauty and something that I don't know that we've mentioned so far in season three, but it's an oldie butty goody that with the old standards we went a mile wide but an inch deep. And with these new standards, we're looking to go an inch wide and a mile deep. Right. And the point of that is that we want to be able to go further so that when we're not with our students, they have some mechanism that they can reference to and say, this is how we kind of work through this problem in my class.
SPEAKER_02And it's really about problem solving, right? Like if we are finding a question and figuring out how to solve it, I think if we can get our kids with more complex needs to really focus on that part of the science. It's the scientific thinking. Maybe they don't need to know about like all the different types of rocks. While cool, fun. It's what skills are going to help them later on, how to identify a problem, and then how to figure out how to solve it. Oh, wasn't it like a song?
SPEAKER_01Okay. But but the dance you just did. I nailed some song, you guys. We're all like, nope.
SPEAKER_02Something like a DJ, you'll I'll solve it. You know what I want to do? Nothing.
SPEAKER_01DJ revolve it.
SPEAKER_02Was that it?
SPEAKER_01Not I'll solve it. No, that's not right.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I think I went to, you know, the I did like a little those songs that was Saturday morning cartoons when it was little like, you know, construct maybe it is a kid.
SPEAKER_02Maybe it is maybe it's maybe it's a bill on capital building. Maybe it's Bob the Builder, I'm thinking.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, you jammed out like it was not Bob the Builder. I jammed out the Bob the Builder.
SPEAKER_03Anyway things are popular in our house too.
Relevance And Planning Backward From 22
SPEAKER_01Well, again, I've actually talked about this before, but what's resonating with me now is that the importance of having this intentional intentionally designed this way. I read outsiders three different times because I moved three straight years and each state was that on their curriculum, it was something different they were doing. So last night I went to my son's open house for a program that he's part of at his school, and they were talking about the outsiders. Like, has anybody read it? And I'm like, Can somebody else put a hand up for me? Have you seen the movie? Can somebody else put a hand up for me? Because I had both my hands up. And that's where I was kind of going with that. Like, if we keep repeating, sure. Like I felt very successful the third time we were talking about the outsiders. I'm like, oh hey, you guys didn't even talk about this, which they talked about in Ohio.
SPEAKER_02You you must have sound really intelligent by the third time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's why I just keep talking about the same things all the time. Is that why they finally pass you to seventh grade from sixth grade?
SPEAKER_02Well, you're not telling your buddies you're in sixth grade three times.
SPEAKER_01All the same school.
SPEAKER_03You know, they call that reclassing these days. You were reclass.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I can't wait for this episode to be done.
SPEAKER_02So Tony, Tony's gonna be like, I need to work for MCIU because they know how to have fun over there.
SPEAKER_01Reclass Coon. We're making shirts.
SPEAKER_03I seriously that's what I'm gonna call all. Yeah, it's great. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01She will too.
SPEAKER_02It'll stick for five years.
SPEAKER_01We're never doing a surprise guest ever again.
SPEAKER_02No, this is the best. I'm just gonna keep bringing IU colleagues. Raz Andrew.
SPEAKER_01So there's a level of success that I can feel as a learner because I had already read the book and I didn't have to read again, and I could be part of the conversation. I knew that, you know, like I knew where this is going. I knew that. And so that's what a lot of our learners might feel like, oh, butterflies, I know what we're doing. Like there's success there. I think the teachers feel comfortable in that too. And they feel comfortable in that too. So the important I think they know it's engaging.
SPEAKER_02Like it's engaging. You can talk.
SPEAKER_01Kids love this every year. That's why we do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, where I'm going is that learning doesn't happen in comfort. Right. That we need to step into a different space. That's profound.
Stop Repeating Comfort Units
SPEAKER_03Well, it's about perseverance, right? I mean, that's in the mathematical practices. And I believe there's something along those lines in those scientific elements I was telling you about that I can't remember all, but just the first one. There are different programs I work in where we talk about helping students learn to do what is non-preferred, right? Things that you don't like, things we do all the time as parents or caregivers or employees, you know, all of that. But what I really wanted to say to Andrew's point was the idea that when we repeat, repeat, repeat, sometimes our kids in our complex or more significant kids, the teacher will say to you, but Carrie, the data's all over the place, right? I'm not sure that they have it, quote, mastered, right? And some of my argument back to that is how many times do you want to be asked how to dress the weather bear or do the days of the week? One of my favorite stories is being in a high school program, going around with supervisor. This is many, like probably almost a decade ago since this happened. But we're going room to room and I'm getting a feel for their program. And it's high school and they're doing the weather. And literally, I think they had a weather bear. Now, remind me, like it's 10 years ago. Nonetheless, the kid went across the table at the teacher. And, you know, okay, so we we can't allow that. That's not an employability skill. You can't go across the table at your boss because you don't like that they repeated themselves. But we walked out of the classroom and I looked at her and I said, you know, I might go across the table too, because I'm in high school. And how many times have I answered these questions around dressing a bit what we do around like morning meeting kinds of times? And so I asked my teachers now, take a look sometimes. Do a, you know, I grew up Tom and Jerry, you know, with the angel and devil on your shoulder. Can you sort of have an out-of-body experience in your own classroom and say, you know, I've asked Patrice this every day for six weeks or the last three years. I think she knows it. I think some point she's time to move on. I'm done. I'm not gonna answer this again because maybe I'm not getting it right. Yeah. So I have to say it this way, or I say it this way. Yeah. We have to kind of think about our data. We have to think about what we're doing. So if we can, Andrew, look at some of those units, how do they grow? And in the dynamic learning maps, when you look at the essential elements. So by the way, the essential elements replace the alternate eligible content and the PA standards. When we adopted dynamic learning maps, we adopted that. And so in those EEs, you have linkage levels. So kids can be taught the same concept, but you and Steel's one of you might be initial, one of you might be precursor, and one of you might be target. And so you can run lessons that way. The same is true over the scope of the K to 12, if you will, set of essential elements. They grow with the student. So you can make things more rigorous, make them continue to be more relevant to change that sort of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love that you used my name and the way you did it made it seem like to the listener that I wasn't paying attention. Like you were bringing me back, and you're like, Andrew, and then you kept going. Which is not the case. I was 100% with you. She knows, yeah. At least from my own.
SPEAKER_03I know, but I said something else before I went back to what your point was.
SPEAKER_01So I was just clear. You're using me as a transition point.
SPEAKER_03I sure did because you can see the ADHD kicking in with me.
SPEAKER_01Well, the other thing I I want to point out is you were saying there's a lot that Patrice can do. The one thing she can't do is dance to Bob the Builder because whatever you were doing a little bit ago, that was a mess.
SPEAKER_02First of all, I can dance to Bob the Builder. You didn't like my version of the dance. So you are the barrier, not me. I can dance.
SPEAKER_01Bob of the Barrier again. This is continuing for the whole season. Okay, what you were saying before. Thank you, Tony.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm trying to think now. Sorry, Tony. The whole Bob the Builder. Can we build it? Yes, yes, we can. How was it? I think that that should be like a mantra in a classroom. Like, can we do it? Yes, we can.
SPEAKER_01Andrew says that everything can we solve it? Go ahead, Tony.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no, it's fine. Capital Hose. Go ahead, sir. When you were mentioning the 12th grader with the weather bear doing this over and over and over again, I think going back to our conversation with Rob this morning about math and getting answers, you found the song.
SPEAKER_02I did.
SPEAKER_04Let's hear it.
SPEAKER_02It's ice ice, baby. If there's a problem, you I'll solve it.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, that's not at all what you were saying. That's not where you were going to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04No, I don't agree. How Rob was saying the journey of solving the problem and just making a miscalculation. Yeah. So the student has known how to do this for a long time and maybe they just misspoke or they miscalculated. I think we have to reassess our our view on what's a right answer, what's a wrong answer. And that's so I think it all ties together. Whether you're a regular ed support classroom, like what have you, I think we have to figure out where the breakdown was.
SPEAKER_02Was it a breakdown in their understanding or was it a miscreation? Speaking, a miscalculation, a misswhate.
Mastery Myths And Modern Life Skills
SPEAKER_03Yep. I think there's also, Tony, what you're talking about, a misnomer about teaching to mastery. Now, one, what is mastery? 70%, 80%, 100%. Not every skill, and probably many, don't need to be taught to mastery. And so we are again to pick on like drill and practice skills that we're waiting for some magical number to rain down like a we had 70.
SPEAKER_04Rainbow. We're done. You're good.
SPEAKER_03Rainbow.
SPEAKER_02And be like, and I never have to do that again. Check. That's kind of what it is.
SPEAKER_01Sorry, you're only 68. You did not hit mass.
SPEAKER_02No, but that's literally what has happened. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's literally what's happening.
SPEAKER_04And then that goes back to the relevancy. Is this really relevant to the student for their success when they leave us?
SPEAKER_02Why are we still doing analog clocks?
SPEAKER_04Well.
SPEAKER_02Every time.
SPEAKER_03Like well, you're right. Like updating practices. So why are we teaching time or weather in certain ways when you could teach an app on a smart device?
SPEAKER_04It's a much more life skill-focused.
SPEAKER_03Oh, let me say if you're between 65 and 80, shorts, short sleeves, maybe a jacket. Right. Anything probably 75 to 100 is a t-shirt and shorts. Like much more relevant. So that you're, yeah, not doing the weather bear so much. And there's not really a lot of weather bears around anymore. I will say that. But some of those same storied practices are there. And that's what I think we need to kind of retool.
SPEAKER_04And I'm not saying we should get rid of the benchmark altogether, like 70 might be your number, but let the teacher decide whether that student's ready to move on or 68 is okay. 68 is okay. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Well, and some are precursor skills. And what many people who work with low incidence students will tell you is you don't understand sometimes how they have skill F when they're missing D and E. And so again, teaching to that mastery, waiting for the you know, rainbow to show up is not a good use of time on a lot of levels.
Final Thoughts And Listener Call
SPEAKER_01Right. Carrie, we are running out of time. So I want to give you a choice. Would you like to provide the second to last final thought? Oh. Or we could all jam out to a remix I just made of Ice Ice Baby and Bob the Builder. It's totally your choice.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I think I really need the Ice Ice Baby Bob the Builder remix. You're offering it to the audience. I I can't take that from them.
SPEAKER_01You know what?
SPEAKER_02Unfortunately, video feed just another opportunity to embarrass Patrice to make her feel bad about showing her authentic self.
SPEAKER_01Andrew and I don't do that. So yeah, thank you. Thank you, Tony.
SPEAKER_02Did you hear the sarcasm? Did you hear the sarcasm? Because everyone else is.
SPEAKER_01I am a monotone sarcasm individual.
SPEAKER_03I just want to know that if Andrew really had developed this Bob the Builder ice ice baby remote. I would have danced. Well, no, I think I'm offended because that means he wasn't listening to me and he was writing on his paper over there.
SPEAKER_01I was trying to tell you, I'm so busy listening to you, I didn't actually make it. It was you called my bluff. Ice ice baby, can we build it? Yes, we can.
SPEAKER_02Liar, liar, pants, fire. So Carrie, I don't have a choice anymore. Second to last thought, please.
SPEAKER_01Second to last thought for our conversation here and something that maybe you didn't get to say or that you think would be important for you.
SPEAKER_04Anything you want to inspire us with or leave us with?
SPEAKER_03I would say that this is such a cool and important conversation to think about all our learners. We just got off a meeting. What does all mean? And so, how do you think about all learners and what is available to us, things like the DLM, what their essential elements, to continue to build on our instructional practice and how we're doing instruction across all these important content areas.
SPEAKER_02That was good one, KK.
SPEAKER_01Well done. Now I'll just make it a turn wreck and then we'll call it an episode. The thing that's been sitting with me this entire conversation is that our work is not done. And I think in a lot of ways, I'll speak for myself on this journey that we've spent over three years working in steels trying to empower educators. And as we see that progress, it's like, yes, we're getting there, right? We're we're getting on on board. This is happening. But this conversation has opened my eyes to say, like, there's still a lot that we have to do. You know, even if we get to 70% mastery, that doesn't mean that we got everyone on board. And and what does that work look like to paraphrase what you said? How can we empower educators and our learning process so that we're including all? And not some, not most, not the majority, but all. If we don't include everyone, have we really achieved what we're looking to achieve? So I think it's a great opportunity for intentional collaboration and conversations to happen and also to further our learning. You've inspired me to continue to think about this in a broader sense and expand my view of all, with the exception of Patrice. If we don't include Patrice, we still have all.
SPEAKER_02Because I already get it.
SPEAKER_01Because you already got it. Yeah. Thank you, Carrie. It was a pleasure meeting you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, a pleasure. Tony's like, and we're wrapping this up for including. You're done.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for being on the show. As always, thank you to our listeners for tuning in.
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