Liza Holland [00:00:02]:
Welcome to education perspectives. I am your host, Liza Holland. This is a podcast that explores the role of education in our society from a variety of lenses. Education needs to evolve to meet the needs of today and the future. Solving such huge issues requires understanding. Join me as we begin to explore the many perspectives of education.
Liza Holland [00:00:28]:
Lauren Hill is a nationally board certified teacher. Lauren, who goes by she or her, teaches middle school ElA at Leestown Middle School in Lexington, Kentucky. She has also taught high school and in a correctional setting, served as an instructional coach, and worked as a teacher leadership coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Education. Lauren directs classroom teachers enacting positive solutions c steps, which provides coaching and action research based learning to emerging teacher leaders here in Kentucky. She also serves as associate director of the University of Kentucky Jewish Heritage Fund Holocaust Initiative, which supports Kentucky teachers in meeting the mandate for effective Holocaust education. Lauren graduated from Barnard College with a BA in history, Vanderbilt University with an Med in curriculum and supervision, and the University of Kentucky with a rank one in education in English. Lauren focuses on elevating teachers as experts and leaders who facilitate deeper learning for their students. So Lauren, welcome to education perspectives.
Liza Holland [00:01:33]:
We're so excited to have you.
Lauren Hill [00:01:35]:
Thank you so much. I appreciate being here.
Liza Holland [00:01:38]:
So let's kick off with the big 30,000 foot view. Why do you think that we as a society invest in education?
Lauren Hill [00:01:46]:
Well, why wouldn't we invest in education? I can't even imagine a situation where we wouldn't. I'm still teaching Plato's allegory of the cave to my 7th graders and his point that we don't know if what we see is real. We only know what we know. And we must rely on sages and teachers and others to let us know when we have walked down a wrong path or misunderstand. And we knew it then and we know it now, that we cannot be educated alone. Education is societal and it is a society responsibility to make that better for everyone. If you care about the people that you live with.
Liza Holland [00:02:32]:
Absolutely. So you've been a teacher for a long time. What drew you to education?
Lauren Hill [00:02:36]:
Such a good question. I was active member of my jewish youth group. It was called the b'nai birth Youth, and I helped plan a weekend educational retreat. It was a social action oriented study space. And putting the whole thing together and creating experiences for other people that really changed how they saw themselves and each other in a positive way was the most fun and rewarding experience I ever had. And I honestly didn't know. I mean, how many jobs do you know about? I don't know, very many, you know, teacher. Right.
Lauren Hill [00:03:14]:
So both things are true. I had this very important experience that helped me see that teaching would be a great fit for me. But also, I think I had a really narrow view of what was possible. I don't remember really choosing to be a teacher. It was just an easy next step in where I was in my life. I'm really glad it worked out and that I didn't wake up 510, 30 years later and regret it. I've really appreciated every single minute.
Liza Holland [00:03:43]:
You've done a lot of of things that enhanced your education journey. I know you're nationally board certified and you are in charge of c steps, that sort of a thing. What drove you to continue on that lifelong learning journey as a teacher?
Lauren Hill [00:04:00]:
Sure. Well, steps, pronounced steps, classroom teachers enacting positive solutions was sort of the end of that journey. It was a way to look back at all the ways that I as a teacher learned or didn't learn, and then trying to activate for others that same kind of reflective learning that I had done that had made teaching feel so much more rewarding. Being a reflective individual is a gift, and we don't have time when we're teaching. We're just trying to get through, right? And honestly, if you think about it too hard, who would want to keep doing it? I mean, you feel like a failure every single day because there's always a kid that you can't reach, or a lesson could have gone better. I mean, really, it's a very deep, dark hole. And to use that reflection for growth and do that communally with others, that sort of removes the guilt that one feels is very empowering. And I think it's why I was able to stay in this job for so long.
Lauren Hill [00:05:03]:
No one really sees us do our work except the young people that we are blessed to share time with. So there's your public self and then your closed door teacher self. And the way the system is now, those two spaces don't intertwine. We can tell people through our actions or the way we describe what we do that maybe we're a good teacher and the kids might like us or not like us and communicate other things to other adults. But really, we suffer from imposter syndrome because no one shares our space. We are the only judge of our work whose decision carries beyond that semester or that year or that moment. That is truly a way to breed insecurity and isolation, loneliness, and also people who are unable to get any kind of external validation for their work. That feels valid.
Lauren Hill [00:06:04]:
I mean, an administrator might come in for five or ten minutes or even an hour, even 3 hours. But think of the many hours that we are working with those kids. We do it alone and without any sort of mirror to hold up other than the one we hold for ourselves. It's really unhealthy and cruel, frankly.
Liza Holland [00:06:25]:
Okay, well, this is going to make my next question a little more challenging. So maybe some of it is inside and outside the classroom. What do you love about what you do?
Lauren Hill [00:06:35]:
Lots of it. I love designing experiences that help kids grow and learn and think, and that's translated to adults for me. I really enjoy crafting that time. Most of my time is spent planning outside of class time.
Liza Holland [00:06:53]:
Right.
Lauren Hill [00:06:53]:
And then it just sort of rolls when you get to the actual moment. I love the kids themselves. I love the relationships that I've built. I love English. I love thinking and talking about language and books and history and making sense of it and helping people understand their own role in their lives and in our community. That part's really, truly wonderful. I don't love that feeling of inadequacy. I mean, think about it all the really looking at student work and really deeply planning their time.
Lauren Hill [00:07:30]:
We get anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes a day to do not only those things, but a long laundry list of other required tasks, and I never have the time to do any of it well. So I'm constantly making sacrifices and deciding where those sacrifices go. And it's easy to sacrifice one's own well being because you don't want the guilt associated with sacrificing your students or a colleague. I really find that painful.
Liza Holland [00:08:03]:
I can totally understand why, and it makes me even happier to be involved with you on this deeper learning journey that we both are on and looking at maybe reforming education and reinventing it to where we're not creating those types of, you know, negative experiences for teachers. Tell us a little bit about your thoughts on teacher leadership and how that relates to deeper learning.
Lauren Hill [00:08:29]:
Sure. Back up just a little. I think middle schools have the right idea. I am part of a team at my middle school, and that team really works to support those kids in a way that is effective, thoughtful, and caring first, and we loop with our kids so we have deeper relationships with them. I think the right answer. So part of what teacher leadership can do is redesign all sorts of schools so we have those sorts of nested communities of adults and kids who are sort of all in it together. That really addresses some of those concerns that I talked about before, the isolation, the feeling that you're faking people out you know, about who you are and what you do. It's much less in these environments.
Lauren Hill [00:09:19]:
And I really look forward to if we are on teams, then we can destroy the schedule because I'm going to keep them for 3 hours today and you're going to keep them for 3 hours tomorrow, or we're all going to go on a field trip, or we have control over the experiences that we create for kids and that's where deeper learning happens. Are we still teaching a social studies class and an english class and a math class when we could be teaching utopias right or wrong or like, let's find real big ideas and then fit the subjects in those ideas rather than choosing these subjects and then making the ideas have to fit the subject. Nobody goes to work and does math today. They do bigger things that are connected, interconnected. I mean, maybe some people go to work and do math. I don't know who they are, but like, I have to do math. I have to do math. I'm so old.
Lauren Hill [00:10:16]:
I had a grade book that I wrote in and then a little handheld calculator that I had to figure out their grades. Like, come on, everything is interconnected and we teach like it isn't. And deeper learning is the harbinger of tearing those things down and creating actual authentic experiences for kids that matter every day. And we have no excuse for not doing it.
Liza Holland [00:10:41]:
I completely agree with you. I think there's so much that we have taken as gospel that this is how things have to be done and the world around us has gone way past that. I know that you and one of our former guests, Barnett Berry, got to do some really good work together, and he speaks a lot about kind of blowing up the schedule as it sits in front of you and whatnot. What kind of experience have you had so far in trying to. Obviously, we've made some progress and you are working in a team environment there. What kind of things could help you move forward into that more richer experience and what kind of things are holding you back?
Lauren Hill [00:11:27]:
So you asked about teacher leadership and I barely got there, and that really is the answer. I mean, we're the ones who are with those kids all day long who's going to be more passionate about breaking down barriers and creating solutions to challenges than us. I mean, you give us this relationship based profession and then don't give us the time or tools or compensation to make it the best possible thing it can be for those young people. It seems backwards to me. Teachers who are leaders of their peers in their contexts, who don't have to leave teaching to do it, by the way, is the answer. We address all of these things. I worked for one year as a hybrid teacher leader. Barnett called them teacher preneurs.
Lauren Hill [00:12:14]:
It's a lovely little term. I taught three classes in the morning and then in the afternoon. I worked on our national board US department of Ed Seed Grant, which is why I was able to create steps in the first place. And so as a teacher, you don't lose that classroom grounding or that sense of what it feels like every day. It's very easy for leaders to, who are even teachers for many years, to sort of forget the complexity and the emotional weightiness of that work every day. And Barnett's work really was a beacon in all of that. That sense of there is a better way and let's invent it together was one of the things that kept me in this profession. I earned my national boards in 2010.
Lauren Hill [00:13:04]:
It was just at the beginning of the implementation of the common Core and this state, Kentucky actually turned to teachers and said, okay, how are we going to do this? How do you want to do this? And it was a joy to be part of trying to figure that out and to bring together a coalition of other willing teachers who wanted to try to figure it out, too.
Liza Holland [00:13:25]:
That doesn't happen as often as we'd like it to. It really needs to be a ground up sort of an experience, because what I have seen, not being a, you know, someone from education, but what I saw happening regularly as a designated parent in a bunch of, you know, Frankfurt based meetings was I was the only one in the room with my hand up going, um, you know, teachers don't have time to do that. Right? And so that disconnect there, I think, is really significant. And not that everybody in the room didn't have the best of intentions, but it wound up being, okay, we're going to create all of these things and we're going to scaffold all this stuff and we're going to create pacing, you know, schedules. And so what ended up happening was teachers are being massively micromanaged, and that whole teaching to the test piece really became a thing. I'd love to have your thoughts on what districts could do better to be able to support teachers in this teacher leadership from more of a ground up.
Lauren Hill [00:14:29]:
Type of a perspective, so districts can think about how they might free up some time for teachers to work together, to share classes, to share students and structures through which we can because of our expertise or because of our willingness to put in extra time, earn additional money by leading initiatives or. I feel like action research is the best approach because that's a really good.
Liza Holland [00:14:59]:
Lead in, because I was going to ask you about that next. I love that whole piece of actually creating data to support how things are work better.
Lauren Hill [00:15:08]:
Well, let's not lead with the data piece as much as the experiential piece. It goes back to that reflective educator idea when we endeavor to study ourselves in a real context. Right. You've been to graduate school. Well, you don't have to anyone. People who go to graduate school are often confronted with having to write a thesis.
Liza Holland [00:15:32]:
And my husband wrote a thesis. Trust me, I know. I understand the enormity.
Lauren Hill [00:15:37]:
So the pressure, like, oh, I need to come up with an original idea. And it's not that so much. It's how does this particular idea work for these particular students and this community in this time and space? So as we apply it to a new situation and see how it works here, that is really informative and not only how it works in my school or on my hallway, but in my body, in the belief system that I bring to school with me every single day. Is it conflicting? Well, then something is going to change, either my behavior or my beliefs. And that looking inward while sharing with community that steps is founded on this action research approach to change really makes large changes for teachers possible, because we're wrestling with knowledge and beliefs and day to day behavior.
Liza Holland [00:16:33]:
Boy, that behavior part is a big thing. Finding ways to make things more engaging is going to really combat one of those big problems, which is the behavior. Once we engage our kids and really allow them to have some power over their education and whatnot, I think we're going to see a lot of problems that exist go away because I've watched it with really good teachers for a long time. They don't misbehave, and they're really good teachers classes the way they do in others.
Lauren Hill [00:17:00]:
Well, I'm a firm believer that we need to deal in the world that is available to us and not the world we don't control. So whenever I hear a teacher start talking about, oh, it's home life, it's this, or they're not taught x, or nobody has manners anymore, like, it's noise, because I'm not gonna. I can't change any of those things. The beauty of being on a team, on a hallway, in a space, is that you have the opportunity to encase a young person in an entire day long, week long, year long experience of mutually respected expectations. It's so much harder on us. When a kid goes from one class to another to another to another. And I can eat in here, I can cuss you out in there, I can throw the chair in here, or I can be on my phone over here and, like, it's too much for any individual to try to decode what is acceptable. And if you are not by nature compliant, which, by the way, is not necessarily a trait we want to instill in our young people.
Lauren Hill [00:18:10]:
Blind authority. You are setting yourself up for failure. And how Lees town turned itself around from the least desirable school in this district to one of the most desirable, was creating that uniform experience for every kid every day. And I know sometimes we feel that we're focusing on the wrong things. Who cares if that those jeans are torn or that kids wearing a hoodie? And I don't. I don't care about either of those things. But what I do care about are mutually agreed upon expectations. And if the expectations are wrong, then we need to change them.
Lauren Hill [00:18:50]:
And our best teachers work together to create that environment and then also offer experiences that are worth having. To get kids to shut up and do the worksheet is in no one's best interest.
Liza Holland [00:19:05]:
Yep. Yes. I just. I love being in education at this particular point in time because it seems like the energy is there to move us in the right direction. We may have to start small to go big, but can you tell us a story or a favorite memory that you have about your work in education that kind of gives us hope?
Lauren Hill [00:19:26]:
Oh, you want a hopeful story?
Liza Holland [00:19:28]:
I want a hopeful story or a successful challenge story. Whatever you'd like to share.
Lauren Hill [00:19:34]:
I'm the kid who finally got it. You know, I feel like I learn more every single day. That keeps me here. Right? Because I don't know what the next thing will be. And just trying to be open to whatever it is and understanding my own misperceptions is super fun. I have long standing relationships with students who went on, you know, to have careers or families or both or whatever, who, as adults, are very grateful of, you know, the time we had together. And that means a lot to me that folks can look back and still see it as valuable. Went to the cracker barrel with my family the other night, and some woman who had, like, five kids with her was like, miss Hill.
Lauren Hill [00:20:16]:
I was like, yes. And she was like, I'm so and so. And I remember your class so well, and this is my kid, and this kid's in, you know, starting in high school next year. And that is not a story in the classic sense. Of the word, but I take a lot of pride in that. And the teachers I've worked with, you know, step started in 2014, and we've served over 250 teachers. And each one of them, I had a deep investment in their project and I learned about teaching and learning from them and through them, and I've taught in my school, but I've also learned about so many other people's classrooms and spaces. And I just feel so grateful, but also respectful of this chance that I was going to say I've been given.
Lauren Hill [00:21:04]:
But I also feel like I carved it out for myself a little bit, found it kicking and screaming, but it's made my life really rich. And I will not wake up and wish that I had chosen a different path, even though I found myself in teaching rather accidentally. The real story is not even necessarily safe for this conversation. But I cannot imagine doing anything different. I am very concerned about the future. The job is undoable. It's undoable. You can't do it.
Lauren Hill [00:21:34]:
And it gets harder every day. The more we learn about how kids learn. That's just. It's great, but it's one more thing I have to attend to. And the list is very, very long. And this is not sustainable. And when you add to that a legislature that appears to have your picture on a target somewhere that they are throwing darts at with great regularity, it is. I can't even carry the respect of my community with me to work anymore.
Lauren Hill [00:22:07]:
And I don't know who you're going to get to do this job. Teachers already come into the profession with some of the lowest gpas and test scores of any other workforce. And you are handicapping yourself and the rest of the future by not changing how we treat and think about and talk about teachers.
Liza Holland [00:22:28]:
That was so incredibly well said, and it kind of answered my final question, and I don't know that you could make it better. Lauren, thank you so very much for being with us here today. And thank you for all that you're doing for other teachers because it's really powerful, powerful work.
Lauren Hill [00:22:44]:
Well, I love it and I love them. And I'm very proud of the last 34 years. That's not the right word, but it's the only one I have. And it's a miracle to me that I am sitting here today after having lived this life. So thank you for chatting about it with me.
Liza Holland [00:23:04]:
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Liza Holland [00:23:07]:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of education Perspectives. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Let us know which education perspectives you would like to hear or share, please subscribe and share with your friends.