Clarity for Comprehensive School Transformation with Dr. Lyn Sharratt

PODCAST Season 2 EPISODE 16

Dr. Lyn Sharratt

Quote of the Podcast – 

Hope is NOT a strategy in Teaching

Introduction of Guest BIO – 

Lyn Sharratt is a highly sought-after expert in the field of education. A distinguished practitioner, researcher, author, and presenter, she has dedicated her career to turning cutting-edge research into practical guidance for system and school leaders. With her extensive experience and expertise, she has developed a unique roadmap for education leaders to utilize ongoing assessment to inform instruction and drive equity at all levels of the education system. Lyn has a Social Work undergrad degree from the University of Waterloo; an Education degree from University of Western Ontario; a Masters Degree from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and a Doctorate in Theory and Policy Studies from University of Toronto, Canada. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally, and her insights and strategies have transformed countless classrooms, schools, districts, and even entire education systems. Her notable publications include Clarity: What Matters MOST in Learning, Teaching & Leading (Corwin, 2019); Putting Faces on The Data (10th Anniversary Edition, with Dr. Michael Fullan, Corwin, 2022); and is currently writing her seventh book with Dr. John Hattie (Corwin, 2025, in Press).

Interview

Agents of Change: Leaders/Innovators

•  30,000 Ft. View – Why so we, as a society invest in education?
• What drew you to education?
• You host a podcast Sustaining System and School Improvement – what made you begin?
• How do you ensure System and School Improvement?
• Tell us about your perspectives on education Internationally?
• Tell me about the Clarity Learning Suite
• What are the biggest challenges to you?
• What would you like decision makers to know?

Podcast/book shoutouts

CLARITY Learning Suite (CLS) 24/7 online Platform - PL for Teachers and Leaders

Sustaining System and School Improvement Podcast

Transcript

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]:
Doctor Lynn Sherratt is a highly sought after expert in the field of education. A distinguished practitioner, researcher, author, and presenter, she has dedicated her career to turning cutting edge research into practical guidance for system and school leaders. With her extensive experience and expertise, she has developed a unique roadmap for education leaders to utilize ongoing assessment to inform instruction and drive equity at all levels of the education system. Lynn has a social work undergrad degree from the University of Waterloo, an education degree from the University of Western Ontario, a master's degree from the Ontario Institute For Studies in Education, and a doctorate in theory and policy studies from the University of Toronto, Canada. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally, and her insights and strategies have transformed countless classrooms, schools, districts, and even entire education systems. Her notable publications include clarity, what matters most in learning, teaching, and leading, putting faces on the data, and is currently writing her 7th book with doctor John Heddy. Doctor Lynn Sherritt, we're so very glad to have you on Education Perspectives today. Welcome.

Lyn Sharratt [00:01:50]:
Thanks, Liza. I'm really pleased to be here. Looking forward to our conversation.

Liza Holland [00:01:55]:
Marvelous. Well, I kick off every episode with that 30,000 foot view question. Why do you think we, as a society, should invest in education?

Lyn Sharratt [00:02:05]:
I think I've learned over time that we have many resources at our disposal, but actually our children are the most valuable resource. So for me, education becomes really the way forward, I think, to develop students who are critical thinkers, and we know today we really need that asset. So that's certainly why we should invest in education.

Liza Holland [00:02:33]:
Absolutely. So you've been in education for a long time. What drew you to education?

Lyn Sharratt [00:02:39]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I've always wanted to be a teacher, and ever since I had the most wonderful grade 3 teacher, miss Porter. She was the one who really inspired me, and I've never actually looked back, always wanting to teach, and I've had many opportunities to do that, being first involved in leadership as a student and then in education as an inspired educational leader, but I always started as a teacher and I continued to teach. I teach at the University of Toronto now. My students are just a bit bigger and a little older, but I've always taught, and that's my priority, to be very practical and in the moment with the work of education as a teacher.

Liza Holland [00:03:31]:
That's marvelous. And I love that you called out that you started out with student leadership because they are so much a part of our school system or should be anyway. So that's that's marvelous.

Lyn Sharratt [00:03:44]:
So I tuned in to you by listening to your podcast, Sustaining System and School Improvement. What made you begin a podcast like that? Well, you know, I just, I'm just so passionate about the work, and I've been doing the work of sustaining system and school improvement for a very long time. As I said, always teaching, but at the same time, having many opportunities to work across Ontario as a leader, and so for me, I see over and over we have so many changes in education, and so many leaders come and go, that, the work, I think, of supporting students and students' learning begins with system and school improvement.

Liza Holland [00:04:29]:
I totally and completely agree with you, and, for listeners out there, I would highly recommend tuning into the podcast because the the the other thing I really enjoyed was that they're really short. They're, like, in between you could catch it in between classes if you wanted to for a teacher. But just all these little nuggets of wisdom, that's that's marvelous. So I am fascinated by the need for systems improvement in schools because, really, the story goes that it was designed for a very different era. And so taking an existing system, or systems across the world, I should should note, and adapting that to what our new needs and wants are, that's kind of a herculean task. So I would love to kinda get your thoughts and insights since you've actually been really into this work. And how do we go about it, and how do we make it stick?

Lyn Sharratt [00:05:26]:
Yeah. And I think that's a 2 part question. How do we go about it? And then what's the sustainability look like? How do you need to keep this going and keep your energies up to be focused on students' improvement? So for me, I started this work in a very large school district north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, York Region District School Board, and I became a leader there, and my responsibilities were everything that happened in classrooms, and there are 9,000 teachers at the time in in York Region, so that's a very big step to take. So I invited Michael Follin, who was then the Dean of Education at the University of Toronto, our OISE site, which is the Ontario Institute For Studies in Education, and he came out to work alongside me, and our whole team of superintendents. And for me, the work and working alongside Michael was really critical to first have a vision of what was possible, and then also making sure that all of us as system leaders had a line of sight to classrooms and to students in those classrooms. So that was a herculean task, and we put in place professional learning ongoing professional learning for teachers and principals school principals as well. They came to work with Michael and I in school teams, so school improvement teams. They came with a vision, they came with a school improvement plan, and we made sure that every school improvement plan of our 200 schools were aligned to our system plan.

Lyn Sharratt [00:07:24]:
I think that's most important. We have a plan that's aligned, and, and we had a watermark underneath every plan that was literacy. And so for us, literacy was not only the ability to read and write, speak and listen, but also the ability to think critically. So we captured the, I would say, engagement of our teachers from kindergarten to year 12, so that it wasn't just something we were doing in primary or elementary, we were doing it across the system. It was a whole system approach, and what came out of that was the data we collected. And Michael asked me, where are the schools that are in challenging circumstances, but jumping the curve, doing well. So we identified 17 schools who were in challenging circumstances, but were doing very well. And we interviewed those leaders, And we found that when we brought all the data together and we scrutinized the data, we found there were 14 areas that make a difference to increase students' achievement right across a very large system.

Lyn Sharratt [00:08:43]:
System. So Michael called those 14 areas the 14 parameters, and we've been working on that ever since. So Michael and I wrote a book in 2,009 introducing these 14 parameters. We wrote again in 2012 saying that parameter 1 and parameter 14 were the bookends, and that is we believe all students can learn given the right time and support. We believe all teachers can teach given the right assistance. We have high expectations, early and ongoing interventions, and everyone leaders, teachers, and students can articulate why they're doing what they do and how they lead, teach, and learn the way they do. So that was parameter 1. The other book in parameter 14 was we have shared responsibility and accountability.

Lyn Sharratt [00:09:39]:
Everyone owns the faces of our learners right across the system, and learners meaning our students and, of course, our teachers and leaders. So with these 14 parameters, we've just gone very deeply into each one, and we've written again about it. 2012 was our first putting faces on the data and our second one, 2022. Also looking into the 14 parameters and how leadership is instrumental underpinning every single parameter in system and school improvement. So we haven't ever changed our mind about those 14 areas of system and school improvement, and in 2022, we wrote a lot of case studies to show how the evidence clearly points to the critical importance of these 14 parameters working together, connected to each other with parameters 1 and 14, the book ends. So I think that our work is really about moving from statistics and numbers in terms of data collection to actually knowing the faces of the each student behind the numbers. So the putting faces on the data work and the clarity work are very practical ways that teachers and leaders can work together to not only know their students, but how to teach each one.

Liza Holland [00:11:12]:
I am so glad that you are recognizing both the the teachers and the leaders as learners as well. Because we that's really where we need to be getting to as far as inspiring lifelong learners, because you have to be in no matter what profession you're in these days, technology is changing so quickly. Can you tell me a little bit more about I also loved the idea of adding the critical thinking to literacy because I do think that now that content is available in our pockets, that teaching to prepare students for things that are changing so fast really does need to lean much more heavily on that critical thinking and how to process data and that sort of a thing. And I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

Lyn Sharratt [00:11:58]:
Well, you know, I really believe that as teachers, we have a responsibility from kindergarten to year 12 to teach students how to read to learn. So we're learning to read and then we're reading to learn. Similarly with writing, which is a really higher order skill, and that leads us to understand how we read the lines, how we read between the lines, and how we read beyond the lines, and to me, that is critical thinking. And, it starts in kindergarten, and, for me, that reading, writing, critical thinking continuum leads us to year 12 in continuing, I think, to teach students how to read, how to read the inference in text, but how to discern facts from fiction, and that certainly is critical thinking, and I think it's missing in many places right across the globe. I I work in North America, South America, Europe, and, Australia, New Zealand, and I really feel that this work is absolutely critical to looking carefully into the problems we have in society and thinking that we need to start with solid education of our students, our teachers, and leaders.

Liza Holland [00:13:34]:
Yeah. That ability to be able to, to understand out of all of the massive amounts of data or misinformation out there, what what actually is true and how to chart your course through all of that. Wow. So you mentioned that you are doing things internationally, obviously. Tell us a little bit about how you see education and systems improvement changing globally.

Lyn Sharratt [00:14:00]:
Yeah. Well, I work in Chile, and, they are working very hard to really move their system to graduates who are critical thinkers, and what I work on there is not only how to teach reading and writing, and ensuring we have that higher order thinking of critical thinking, but I also work with leaders, not only in Chile but in all of my work across the globe, around leadership skills, and I think that leaders really need to be out in classrooms, so I've developed something called learning walks and talks for leaders, where they walk into classrooms, they surround themselves and think about the 3rd teacher, what's the evidence of critical thinking on the walls in the classroom, and then they kneel down beside a student, if the teacher is not directly teaching all students, they kneel down beside a student and ask 5 questions, and those 5 questions inform teachers and leaders about how the students are travelling in a classroom, in a system, whether I'm in Chile or Australia. And the 5 questions, what are you learning? Why are you learning that? So that's question 1. How are you doing in that learning? Question 2. Question 3, how do you know how you're doing? Question 4, how can you improve? And question 5, where do you go for help? And those 5 questions can be data collection for teachers and for leaders around students' growth and achievement. So I'm always looking at not just achievement, but students' growth. And those five questions relate directly to something I've developed called the assessment waterfall chart. So what are you learning and why, that first question for students, directly relate to is are the learning intentions visible for students in the classroom? Do they know what they're learning, and have teachers unpack why this is relevant for students' lives? That's the first question.

Lyn Sharratt [00:16:20]:
The second one is how are you doing in that learning? And it relates directly to teachers co constructing success criteria with students. That's the second level of my waterfall chart. And those co constructed success criteria tell students how to be successful, for example, in this unit of study. And then the third one, how do you know how you're doing, relates directly to the next construct in the assessment waterfall chart, which is descriptive feedback. Have teachers been giving students descriptive feedback against the co constructed success criteria? And so that those success criteria become absolutely foundational to the success of students everywhere. They have to know how to be successful and what they're going to be assessed on. There need to be no more mysteries about how students are being assessed. They need to know.

Lyn Sharratt [00:17:23]:
So the 4th question, how do you improve, really relates to the 4th dimension in my waterfall chart, and that is peer and self assessment. Do students peer and self assess against the success criteria, so they know their next steps in learning? And finally, the last question, where you go for help, is really an interesting one because students need to know how to be resilient, how to find the answers to their questions without always waiting for the teacher to tell them. So that, to me, sets the tone for students being able to individually set their own learning goals, and that's the last dimension of the waterfall chart. And students being able to set their own goals for learning are always against those success criteria that we developed with students. And I think that's the ultimate. Students setting their own next steps for learning informs us as leaders and teachers that we're being successful in our explicit teaching.

Liza Holland [00:18:35]:
I think that is so marvelous. That is one of the best descriptions of student agency that I've heard. You know? It's making kids aware and how to drive their own learning. I know here in the states, we have unfortunately lived for a a number of decades now under a very serious, you gotta get an aid, failure is not an option sort of a a mandate. And our kids are you know, when you ask them that question about how do you know, in a lot of classrooms, it's like, I don't know. The teacher will tell

Lyn Sharratt [00:19:08]:
me. Yeah. Or I get I get a mark.

Liza Holland [00:19:11]:
Yeah. Oh, I love that.

Lyn Sharratt [00:19:13]:
Yeah. So so for me, I'm really passionate about students and teachers together, co constructing those success criteria so that there's no surprises, there's no mystery for students how to be successful. And I've even gone, Liza, as far as creating bump it up walls. That's a great term for students' progression of learning, being on a wall, so that students can see the progression of the unit of study, the expectations, what it would look like. I have teachers co constructing examples of students' work all along from a low level piece of work to a higher order piece of work, and they're all anonymous samples. They're not from the classroom, very important, but students are able to go to the bump it up wall and see where do I think I am in completing this task in a unit of study. Well, I think I might be a 3. Well, then it gives teachers and students an opportunity to say, Well, if you think you're a 3, let's look at the 4 example and see what you need to do to get to that example.

Lyn Sharratt [00:20:31]:
And I had one student just recently say to me, Well, I just don't want to be a 4, actually. I want to be a 7. So how do I get to be a 7? It's fabulous, and it's bumping up walls are a way that students can self assess and answer those questions, where they are, what they need to do next, and how they can set their own goals for learning. Yeah. It's agency. Exactly.

Liza Holland [00:20:56]:
And I like that too because it's something that even your more introverted students could take time and visually see that and whatnot and maybe be better prepared for the verbal discussions. That's that's so fun.

Lyn Sharratt [00:21:10]:
That's so fun. It is fun. And even the word bump it up wall is really fun. Students love it. They understand it. And we usually put visuals above those exemplars so that the one that I use in my clarity book is ice cream cones. You got the plain ice cream cone, then you got the one with 2 scoops, then 3 scoops, then 4 scoops, then 5 scoops, and it can go on and on. But students can see, well, here I am at 3 scoops.

Lyn Sharratt [00:21:38]:
How do I get to 4 or 5? What do I need to do? And so the success criteria are underneath the examples of student work at that level so that students can see how the success criteria define where you are and what you need to do next. It's a real conversation piece. Bump it up walls I have so many pictures of right across the globe, teachers standing with students, talking about their work, looking at their work, and deciding where they are on that bump it up wall, and where they need to go next. So for me, bump it up walls are really visual, a visual indicator of formative assessment, where you need to go, that ongoing formative assessment. It begins for me with that co constructed success criteria so students know how to be successful.

Liza Holland [00:22:33]:
That is awesome. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you're doing with assessment? Because, obviously, particularly in the US, a lot of energy is put on these standardized tests. And, realistically, that's a measure of a shot a snapshot in time and but they're all looking for, okay, how do we measure things like critical thinking or collaboration or any of that kind of a thing? What what types of thoughts do you have on the area of assessment?

Lyn Sharratt [00:23:02]:
Yeah. So I think that we really need to understand, as as teachers and readers, that there are 3 types of assessment. There's diagnostic assessment, that's before the lesson begins, where are the students, what do they already know, that prior learning assessment, and then there's assessment during learning, which is formative assessment, ongoing. Students are always in the conversation with teachers about, you know, where are you in these success criteria, what are your next steps, and then there's summative assessment, which is at the end of a unit of study when we determine how well the student has competently achieved the success criteria. So before, during, and after, I think, is a simple way of talking about diagnostic formative and summative assessment. And one of the things that I think we're really good at is summative assessment. We understand grades and marks and reporting to parents. It's not something that needs to be pushed aside.

Lyn Sharratt [00:24:08]:
I think it has a place for sure, and in thinking about summative assessment, I think the best way to really have parents involved in student evaluation is doing a student led conference. So instead of having a parent teacher interview, we engage our 200 schools engage in student led conferencing where students present a portfolio of their work to the parents and talk about those 5 questions: what am I learning? How am I doing? How do I know how I'm doing? How can I improve? And where do I go for help beyond the teacher? So that's summative, but when we look at formative assessment, that's during the lesson. So I think about the Venn diagram. It's a fabulous tool for collecting how students are travelling in a unit of study. So I make a Venn on a page, and the left part of the Venn is students who aren't getting the concept in my unit of study. The middle part of the VIN is students who are stuck and maybe need a light touch, and the right hand part of the VIN is students who are doing well and are getting the concept. That helps me really differentiate my instruction. Students who are stuck in the middle of the van maybe just need a light touch, a converse a quick conversation at their table group, but the students who are not getting the concept, that's a signal for the teacher to bring those students to a small group place in the room where the teacher can teach the concept in a different way because they didn't get it the way the teacher taught it, and it doesn't mean to me that teachers come to this table with this group who didn't get the concept and just teach it in the same way, only louder and longer.

Lyn Sharratt [00:26:10]:
Yep. It means teaching it in a different way because they didn't get it. So for me, that formative assessment tool of the Venn diagram really helps teachers assess against those success criteria as the students are independently working on the follow-up performance task. And then the diagnostics, so diagnostic, formative, and summative. I'll just briefly talk about the diagnostic. To me, that's really important. What do students already know about this unit of study? What do they want to know more about? And then how have they learned of the concepts in this unit. So big ideas and essential questions, figuring out for teachers who already knows the content, and not reteaching things that students already know.

Liza Holland [00:27:04]:
That makes a lot of sense. And I also really enjoy that piece of asking the students, what do you wanna know more about this? What intrigues you? Because when you're talking about engagement, we we have a big apathy and and disengagement problem, in a lot of schools. And just asking them, what do you wanna know more about? Exactly.

Lyn Sharratt [00:27:22]:
What are you wondering? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. What questions do you have? So it's just always about engagement that moves to empowerment, and I just want to talk a little bit about the difference. So engagement is when students are motivated, they're eye to eye, knee to knee, toe to toe, they're really involved, and empowerment is when they move from that stance to actually understanding how they learn, what they need to know next, and set their own goals for learning. So I see that continuum from engagement to empowerment also for teachers and leaders. Get your teachers engaged in the work, the buy in, but then how are they empowered to always be those ongoing learners?

Liza Holland [00:28:15]:
That is great. I, echo that. Please, world, listen to it.

Lyn Sharratt [00:28:21]:
Yeah. Exactly.

Liza Holland [00:28:22]:
And that's an important distinction too because you can be engaged in something, but you still not feel empowered. So that yeah. Absolutely. So you are a prolific author and, working on, just submitting things for your book 7, but you have also embraced technology and have now brought that clarity to a clarity learning suite. And I'd love for you to chat a little bit about what that could do for schools and districts.

Lyn Sharratt [00:28:52]:
Well, thanks so much, Liza. I'm really proud of the Clarity Learning Suite. It's an online, obviously 20 fourseven learning suite, and it moves through all the things that we've just talked about really, all the things in my Clarity text, and the clarity text is clarity what matters most in learning, teaching, and leading, and so the clarity learning suite has modules that are about learning, teaching, and leading, and so it incorporates not only my Clarity text, but also the work that Michael Follin and I have done in putting faces on the data, what great leaders and teachers do, so it embraces assessment, it embraces instruction, it embraces the importance of every classroom being that third teacher, so the walls are are teaching and speaking to us about critical thinking that students are engaged in. The suite also speaks to the importance of learning walks and talks, and those 5 questions that I've talked about. So the suite really encompasses all my research that I've done for a very long time.

Liza Holland [00:30:10]:
Marvelous. I think that having it all in kind of a one stop shop, sort of a a thing where people can search, that's just a really brilliant approach. So I have linked that in the show notes for any of you who are interested in exploring that a little bit further. So let me ask you, change is hard. Right? And especially moving entire districts and systems to to be able to move ahead with the times. It's a challenge. What are the biggest challenges that you face in trying to enact positive change?

Lyn Sharratt [00:30:46]:
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, change is inevitable. I really try to move the thinking in a district, a large or small jurisdiction, from first order change to second order change, and that's not easy. So for me, first order change are all those things we do every day. They're important, but they're not everything. So I'm thinking about my school, so we make sure that the students are comfortable, we make sure that there's time for learning for teachers and for students, we make sure the lights all work, and it's either warm or cool in our classrooms. We're thinking about the environment. We want it to be clean, we want to ensure there's class management, there's orderly transitions in our school, and that's really important, but our research has said that's first order change.

Lyn Sharratt [00:31:40]:
2nd order change is when you actually get beyond the first order changes of buying the new furniture or deciding who's going to drive the limousine for the graduation dance to actually looking at second order change, which is where we collect evidence to know all students are growing and achieving. And that is a transition. It requires our teachers and leaders to reflect on what are the first order changes we're engaged in and how do we move those first order changes to ensure there are second order changes. And the work of Richard Elmore, who's an amazing American educator that we've lost, not too long ago from Harvard, talks about technical changes and cultural changes, and that's where we've come up with. 1st order changes are those technical changes, buying the new furniture, whatever it is, and changes in culture, ensuring it's a culture of learning that's focused on teachers knowing how to teach each student and then collecting evidence that this is working.

Liza Holland [00:32:53]:
That is great. Yeah. I've done some work in change management myself, and it's that transactional versus transformative. And it really engages the mind in a very different way. And it also is something that that requires collaboration, and it requires buy in and all those types of things. It's not the easy questions that a leader can say, well, we're doing this and make it happen. So I love that. You know, one other thing that I noticed in the clarity book was at the end of each of the sections, it talked about taking a pause for clarity.

Liza Holland [00:33:27]:
And I really resonated with that. Can you tell me a little bit about what your thought process was in adding that in?

Lyn Sharratt [00:33:33]:
Yeah. I think that comes from educators a long time ago, and the phrase is taking a deliberate pause. And I'm really committed to us just stopping, taking note of what we're doing, taking time to reflect on, is it making it, is what we're doing in terms of teaching and leading, making a difference to student, all students' achievement, and that's an equity and excellence issue for me, so that deliberate pause I put in there deliberately for us to say this is important for us to stop, and also following the deliberate pause is a commitment, commitment to action. So after each of the chapters in clarity, We take a pause, and then we think about what are we committing to do next, and it's not next month or next year, it's tomorrow, or even today. What are we making that commitment about, having read the research that I've written about?

Liza Holland [00:34:43]:
That's excellent. I appreciate that so much because I do think sometimes we start down a track and really there's some need for adjusting the sales because we're getting off course, we're we're leaning a little too much too far in one direction. You also make different decisions based upon what you know. You know? Exactly. Kinda Maya Angelou's, when you know better, do better.

Lyn Sharratt [00:35:04]:
Exactly. And, you know, the chapter on collaborative inquiry for professionals, I think it's chapter 3 in clarity, we talk about the collaborative inquiry cycle, and right in the middle of that cycle of what you're going to do once you look at your data and you have a collaborative inquiry question, and you then go out to scan the environment, what does the research say? I lead people to consider a pause, a deliberate pause for mid course corrections, and I think that's giving people permission to say, well, we didn't quite get the question right. We found out this information, we need to tweak it a bit or change it, but I think we need to give each other permission for those mid course corrections, those deliberate pause pauses. Are we on

Liza Holland [00:35:52]:
the right track? Absolutely. And that honestly leads me into my final question. I feel like I could talk to you all day. This has been such a great interview. Thank you. But finally, especially being such a change agent, what would you like decision makers to know? And that could be at any level. You decide what a decision maker is.

Lyn Sharratt [00:36:11]:
Yeah. I think, decision makers need to really consider that they need to take the statistical data, uncover the real faces of each student and each teacher behind the data. And, I think of that in 2 ways really, Liza. And one is can you put the, in a private place, put the students' faces on a data wall? I call it a data wall, but Michael and I have done this since the early 2000s, and we decided that we're really talking about a data wall as a questioning wall or a wondering wall. Do we know the students' faces? Who are our responsibility? Who are in our care? What do we know about them? And if we have questions and we're wondering, do we have time in the school week to come together in what what we call a case management meeting To bring the student, the student doesn't come, but you bring the student through a piece of student work because you're wondering about the student. You're questioning, is this student stuck? Is this student really needing further extension? Or is this student struggling? So to me, it's really important that we embrace the faces on the data through a questioning or wondering wall that leads to time for us to unpack the instruction needed for this particular student. Necessary for the student, but actually could be an instructional approach that would be great for others in the class. So work I'm trying to build teachers' capacity to teach all students.

Liza Holland [00:38:02]:
Oh, that's, again, so insightful. And it brings me back to I've been doing lots of interviews with teachers recently in on the podcast and other places. And it comes down to time is probably one of the most precious resources that we have in education. And, you know, the the number of hours that you're at something really doesn't matter if the quality of those hours are not what they could be. And so we maybe really need to be rethinking the school day.

Lyn Sharratt [00:38:34]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And time in the school day for teachers to learn together, and, one of the books that I wrote with a colleague Beata Planche is called Leading Collaborative Learning, and you really need space in the school week for teachers to come together, not be isolated, but come together and learn together. And that's why that case management meeting time, it's only 15 minutes, but it's very powerful in focusing on a student's piece of work and strategizing with, folks around the table. How will we teach the student? What instructional approaches will we try that we haven't tried yet?

Liza Holland [00:39:17]:
Marvelous. Well, this has been a fabulous conversation. I really appreciate you, doctor Lynn Sherritt, for being with me here on Education Perspectives Today.

Lyn Sharratt [00:39:29]:
Thanks so much, Liza. I loved it. I love talking about system and school improvement and, of course, our students. That's why I'm a teacher. Thank you.

Liza Holland [00:39:38]:
Thank you so very much.

Liza Holland [00:39:41]:
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