Podcast Episode
Episode Description
In this episode, I chat with Suzy Evans and Dr. Shane Saeed about how learner agency, metacognition, and assessment can work together rather than be siloed or disconnected.
We explored what the science of learning tells us about helping students take more ownership of their thinking and how teachers can design routines that make assessment something they do with students, not to them. Shane and Susie shared concrete strategies they use in classrooms across their district, along with insights from hosting their popular podcast, Vrainwaves. They also talked about what it looks like to seek balance while juggling so many roles in education.
This episode brings the pieces together for anyone trying to make their practice feel more connected and purposeful.
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Episode Resources
- X: @drshanesaeed
- Instagram handle: @drshanesaeed
- X: @SuzannahEvans2
- LinkedIn: Suzy Evans
Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI transcription tools to support accessibility and provide a searchable, readable version of the podcast. While we’ve reviewed and lightly edited the content for clarity, there may still be occasional errors or omissions.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Thanks to SchoolAI for sponsoring this podcast. If you’ve been thinking about how to bring AI into your classroom in a way that’s safe and support students learning, I want to tell you about SchoolAI. SchoolAI creates a teacher moderated, controlled environment where students can engage meaningfully with AI. You decide how the AI guides your students and it never simply gives answers. Your students interactions give you real time formative assessment data and insights into their learning. This helps you identify who needs more support and who’s ready for an extension, so that you can spend your time on tasks that have the greatest impact. SchoolAI also helps with all those tasks that take up your time, such as leveling text, designing performance tasks, and differentiating assignments. Ready to personalize learning for every student? Sign up at SchoolAI.com I have a link for you all in the show notes and start creating meaningful AI experiences your students will actually benefit from and enjoy.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Welcome to The Balance. I’m Doctor Catlin Tucker, and today I have two incredible educators on the podcast. Doctor Shane Z and Suzy Evans. Doctor Shane Sayeed is an elementary Ela curriculum coordinator in Longmont, Colorado. She earned her doctorate in executive leadership with an emphasis on educational equity. She’s passionate about sharing really strong instructional practices, which you guys are going to hear about today. She is also the author of a book called Be the Flame Sparking Positive Classroom Communities, which outlines high yield, tangible strategies to cultivate strong, positive relationships with all stakeholders. Suzy Evans is currently working as an instructional coordinator in the Saint Brain Valley School District in Longmont, Colorado. She got her start in kindergarten classrooms and kind of worked her way up teaching almost every grade. I feel like an elementary. She holds her master’s degrees in kinesiology and learning design and technology. She and Doctor Saeed co-host the district podcast of Brain Waves, of which I’ve had the absolute honor of being a guest a few times and lead a science of learning collaborative together. So very excited to have these two on the podcast and chat about their incredible work. Well, I am thrilled to have both of you guys on the podcast. It was so much fun being on your podcast a couple months ago. So I’d love to start the way I always do, which is just letting you guys both give us a little kind of glimpse into your journey in education, where it started, kind of how you ended up doing the work that you’re doing. So, Susie, do you want to kick that off?
Suzy Evans
Sure. And yes. Thank you so much for having us. We are thrilled to be here. So I actually got my start in preschool and kinder for about ten years. I know, I know and then kept just kept moving up in grade levels. But what I appreciate so much about my start with our littlest learners is truly that expression. I think it’s everything we need to know. We learned in kindergarten, right? Is the expression, and I believe that is 100% accurate. Foundational skills obviously, but even more importantly, that thirst for learning, the empathy and the executive functioning, all of those I believe are built there. And I just admire our primary, and early, education teachers so much because they are truly the foundation for everything. And so the parallels to middle schoolers, to high schoolers, to even adults, I believe are still there. Yeah. And so I really just am so grateful that that’s where I did did get my start.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I love that. And I have to imagine starting there, because what elementary teachers do so masterfully is model, practice, feedback. Like, I wish I saw more of that in secondary. And I’ll be honest, I think I didn’t do a great job of this in the early part of my career, but just that realization that you have to show them explicitly how to do something and have them practice, practice, practice. And for some reason, so much of that falls to the wayside in secondary. So I can imagine starting there really creates that firm foundation for you as an educator to kind of pull those things through all of your work at the various, grade levels.
Suzy Evans
It does. And I also think people who haven’t been down in the early world tend to underestimate what students are capable of. And I believe so wholeheartedly that those teachers really see the potential of students and learners right from the get go. And that’s something that I also just appreciate so much, because I never am in a place where I’m in a deficit mindset. Having started there, I always know they can do it, they can do it. And so it just it’s been a lovely start to my journey. You know that down there, down in the little world.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
That’s so great, I love that, I love that. All right, Shane, how about you?
Dr. Shane Saeed
So I started also in elementary, but I started in the intermediate grade, so I’m like, Susie, I didn’t ever really actually get to teach the littles, which makes me a bit bummed. So, I actually started in fourth grade. I went back to school to get a master’s in curriculum and instruction to focus on literacy. And as I was reflecting on the question, I was like, I feel like the big theme in my educational career with making decision to learn more based on what I didn’t know enough about. So it was okay. Well, I don’t know enough about how to teach kids how to read, so I should probably go back to school and learn that. And then when I decided I kind of wanted to get my admin license, I was like, great, I have my admin license. I’m so not ready to be a principal because I Know how to work with kids all day long. I have no idea how to work with adults. Yeah, and so that was kind of my next step was I stepped into coaching. And that went a really great way to learn, right? You know, working with kids, it’s not super different than working with adults, right? It’s it’s modeling. It’s being explicit and transparent and intentional about what we want people to take away, right, regardless of what age they are. And so as a district instructional coach, I worked a lot with teachers, and then I worked, on my doctorate and did my research on foundational literacy and, like, rekindled my love of, of all things literacy. And, the elementary Ela coordinator position opened up and I was like, so this feels like a next best, step in the direction. But that was kind of I started in fourth, and I felt like every decision I made with based upon like, what else do I want to learn? To continue to grow because this is really education is really where, I don’t know, I really love to learn more and more. I feel like we’re always continuing to learn and to grow our craft.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I mean, the best educators are those like true lead learners, right? The lifelong learners. I feel like every step I’ve taken as well is just like curiosity, wanting to kind of grow in my own practice and understanding. So I definitely can like, relate to that for sure. So you both do so much to make research feel usable for teachers. Like what drew you to that kind of work? So Shane, I’ll let you kick this one off.
Dr. Shane Saeed
So Suzy and I first met back in 2019, when there’s the steering committee put together at our district for learning about the science of learning, and they called it the science of learning collaborative. And that’s kind of what brought us together. And both of us start in elementary at that time. So that you were in first grade, correct?
Suzy Evans
Correct. Yes. That was right before I ended up moving to forest ultimately. But yes, I was primary at the time.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Yes. Suzy was in first grade. I was in fourth grade. We were working with a bunch of incredible educators from across the district on, science and learning practices in the classroom, and we both saw the power of bringing those research based practices into the classroom and how it wasn’t really that scary. Right? So we know that the biggest barrier to that type of work, it might just be intimidation, whether it’s like, oh, it’s it’s research and there’s a lot of scientific vocabulary and jargon or it might feel like that one more thing. I feel like the two of us really found that it really is just connecting those research based practices to what teachers are already doing in the classroom, and then being really intentional just about being routine and transparent to students about why you’re doing those practices. So it’s not one more thing and it’s not big and scary. It’s really what you probably already know in your gut works.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah I love that. And Susie have you found that the teachers you work with are really open to those kind of not necessarily new strategies, but maybe even just like new ways of integrating them.
Suzy Evans
I have and I think it’s been a reframing is what helps that because when we tell them, like Shane said, it’s not another thing to do necessarily. It’s more like a lens through which you can look, through as far as your instruction goes. And it is. I wanted to say, it’s so kind of you to say that we make research feel usable for teachers, because that truly is our goal. I think almost every day. Wouldn’t you say, Shane is like our guiding question is, how can we help take things out of the clouds and make it feel usable and practical and, you know, classroom teachers are some of the busiest people on earth? I think they are truly. I mean, Shane and I started collaborating at that. In 2019, but then both as instructional coaches, a ridge eventually, and we just see how much they’re doing every day. And I think both of us were drawn to this work and to each other, because we consider it an honor and a privilege to bring them this new information. And they always want to do what’s best for students and to help them understand how this research applies, or any research applies to their content, to their work, to chunk it down for them and make it feel accessible is something I consider my responsibility every day to, to help them do for sure.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Maybe that’s why the three of us hit it off so well, because I almost feel like that’s kind of one of my superpowers. Like there’s all of these incredible, inspiring speakers and I, you know, I love speaking at events and stuff. But I think what I’ve always done well is like, take those things that feel really complicated and break it down and create the routines and the strategies and the templates and the resources that make it feel doable. And then to your point, if teachers feel like, okay, I understand why I get the benefits and now it feels like I have a sequence of manageable steps I can move through to pull this into my lessons and my units. Then, of course, I’m open to it. I think to the point you made earlier of like, we don’t want it to feel like one more thing, like you’re putting something on top of this overflowing plate. And so I just love that you guys are doing that, and you work in an incredible district where I feel like every time I’m in your district, I’m just like, the teachers here are so game for trying things out and experimenting and failing and trying again. And I think that’s a real it’s a real special atmosphere you both work in.
Suzy Evans
We are so lucky. Saint brain, is it just one of the best districts, I think, in the country right now? And it’s just because we have this powerhouse group of teachers who are so dedicated to doing what’s best for students every day. So thank you for that.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah. For sure. So, Susie, you and I share a focus on student agency. It’s something I think we both talk about a lot. All the time. All the time.
Dr. Shane Saeed
And anyone, anyone who will listen. Yes, I know.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I’m always like, it’s not a nice to have. It’s a must have. Let me tell you why. And you talk about, you use the quote teaching ourselves out of a job. So what does that mindset look like in practice? How does it kind of change the way teachers think or should think about their role? How do you manage pushback? Maybe when you work with teachers who might not be as comfortable releasing control to students? And I say this as a pretty heavy control freak myself. So I know the release of control is scary.
Suzy Evans
It is scary. It is. And I think that is why I always meeting people with empathy. It’s so important because when you first consider that letting go of some things, it can be terrifying. And whether that’s in your parenting life, if you have children or in the classroom, it’s very similar, right? So when we think about what’s best for students, though, or our children, is it to create a sense of dependency on us where we become this crutch for their learning? Or is it to be more of a guide on the side, or a facilitator director of traffic, whatever metaphor you like to use, so that students can drive their own learning no matter what class they’re in, what teacher is in front of them, what career path they choose. And and so when you ask yourself that question, I just hope that it’s the latter, because creating a crutch is just never going to end up working out, as you and I both talked about with our daughters that are in college, we need. Right? We taught them how to do laundry so that they would not call us and ask us how to do laundry. Yeah, in the in their freshman year. And I think the key is also to start small. Yeah. And Shane and I talk about this all the time, whether it’s with agency or science of learning. The key is to just eat the elephant one bite at a time. Start small. Right. I mean, all the metaphors. I’m using all the metaphors because you always say too, about choice. There is always a place where you can give choice and that’s one of the things I love so much that you talk about. And choices can be two, two choices. They don’t need to be eight. We can start with progressive choice sports where they have three squares on the choice board, not nine. And the love and logic model of parenting is popular because it helps both the parents and the children. You give them two choices that you’re going to be happy with, either one, the those kinds of things. And this is where the science of learning practices come into play, too, because they are truly the key to building student agency. They shift that cognitive load to students and help create self-aware learners, which leads to agency. And it’s this beautiful cycle.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I could not agree more. And we talked about this when I was on your podcast, Brain Waves, about the Parenting connections. I love that you’re bringing it up now, but we all know as parents, like it’s so much easier to just do the thing and not engage your 10%. Yeah, so much easier to do the cooking project with you by yourself without pulling up that special contraption so they can reach the counter and they can participate with their special, like, you know, kids save utensils, or it’s easier to fold the laundry without them getting involved. And quite frankly, making a whole mess of it. But it’s a process, right? And when we invest in teaching them how to do the thing, it means that eventually they’ll be able to do it on their own. And one of the things that’s so hard with teachers being as busy as they are and as just overworked and overtaxed as they are, is that that little investment of time teaching the kids how to do the thing almost feels like too much, right? It’s easier for a teacher to just tell the kids what the the the book says they need to hear. The curriculum says they need to hear, and kind of move on to the next thing, and trying to really help them create space for the teaching of the skills of how to learn and how to own their role in the classroom. Oh, it’s something that it’s just hard. It’s hard to.
Suzy Evans
It’s daunting for sure. And it you have to be thinking of the long game. I think. Right. And I think elementary teachers, that’s one of the reasons elementary teachers are so good at this is because they have those children all day, and they know that if they don’t invest that time at the beginning to create the structures, create the routines, they are going to have a rough year. And so that’s one of the beauties, I think, of those, you know, younger learners and, and investing that time early on in the school year.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Although I would make that exact same case for every single grade. I don’t care if you’re teaching seniors or ninth grade or sixth grade. It’s like training them around the routines and the expectations, helping to scale, build. At the beginning of the year, I always told teachers it was it was a total slog. The first two months of the school year, I was just like, oh my gosh, I’m exhausted. I feel like I’m strapped to my back and we’re just marching up a hill. As I’m trying to teach them how to do all these things that they were not used to doing. They definitely push back at first, but then we hit October, like mid-October. It was always before Halloween, and it was just like a flip of a switch. And it was magic and so, so worth it.
Dr. Shane Saeed
And so when I think about too, like learning and what we do as teachers and educators, it’s not about providing the content. The question is, did the students learn the content? And if we don’t teach them the skills and how to do the cognitive lift themselves like we’re not, we’re not doing what we need to be doing, which is teaching them right. It’s not like I said the thing and then they must have learned it. I said the things. Did they learn it? Let’s make sure that they learned it. Let’s check in with our thinking, in our learning.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And that is truly the measure of effective teaching is did they learn it right. Not not did I say it? Did I cover it? Did they actually learn it? Yeah.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Did they learn it?
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah. So Shane, you make the science of learning, especially in English language arts. Definitely my wheelhouse as a former Ela teacher feels super accessible. What do you think teachers are missing or misunderstanding about this work? When you go in and maybe start working with them them initially, like what would you love to see happening in Ila classrooms that might not be regularly happening right now or before you get to work with teachers?
Dr. Shane Saeed
Definitely. So I think the theme is going to. Be here that. Like the science of learning and teaching students and teachers, right? And to teach and learn with, and research backed practices in mind is that it’s not one more thing to do. It is the lens in which we plan our content, our lessons, and that we ask students to engage with our content in our lessons. And so I think the biggest misunderstanding is that they see these things as one more thing to do rather than, this is the way we do things. So I know that a lot of times, with Ela especially, and I think my, my emphasis is in the elementary realm and science of learning practices really supports foundational skills. But I actually want to connect science and learning practices, to something that is a bit more broad, which is comprehension, and comprehension and ela, is an outcome. Right? So especially students and secondary students in elementary school comprehension, you can’t scale your way into where is like foundational skills. We can come back to. Right. We can do spaced practice. We explicitly teach. We instruct, but with comprehension. We need prior knowledge on topics and, the content that we’re reading about in order to make sense of the text. I know Dan Willingham in his research talks a lot about background knowledge and, how important it is to comprehension. So I would just love to see more emphasis on building knowledge, to connect to our reading, rather than us trying to skill our way into comprehension, where we’re just doing like main idea, key details, can we find and identify the text structure? And it’s like we those things are helpful and the students need to have that prior knowledge. Prior to engaging with that text in order to actually have those outcomes. And we can do this in a variety of ways, right? It’s building a culture of loving reading and enjoying reading on your off time. I know that there’s a research report that came out that we’ve, since 2003 to, I think, 2023 reading for pleasure had declined by 40%. And it.
Suzy Evans
Was, which is I hate that. Yeah, right. That is awful. All of our faces are just like, what? Oh, that makes me so sad.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Makes me sad. But then you think about if the adults are no longer reading our kids being as modeling, reading and loving reading, right? You know, I think about my family road trips where we would just get an audio book going, and that’s where I got into, like Harry Potter. And that’s why I started reading Harry Potter. And so when I think about those things, right, we want to build that culture of reading so that students are reading on their own time that they’re reading. It’s not even just books like articles, listening to podcasts, like they want to feed their brains, but also, especially in elementary, maybe taking the time to teach science and social studies is super duper important, right? Because we can explicitly draw a connection from that content to the content that we’re reading. So, I think a long drawn out way of saying me and I would really love to see a lot more focus on building knowledge and rather than focusing just on skills, because I think we’re going to not only increase our student outcomes, which is, you know, as you said, the purpose of what we do, but it also is going to help students, develop the love of growing their brains and knowledge.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I love that. I so often when I’m working in training and I’m talking to teachers about the importance of prior knowledge, background knowledge, I’m like, think about it. And I and somebody said this in a training like a participant made this analogy years ago and I was like, I’m going to steal that. But it was this idea that like when kids are interacting with new information, whether it’s something they’re reading or something they’re hearing in a classroom, they have to like Velcro it to something else that exists in their knowledge framework. And if they can’t do it, it is not. They’re not likely to understand or retain or like fully engage with those ideas and so I love this emphasis on how are we helping students build background, how are we helping them make connections? Because another piece that I think is missing in so many classrooms is teachers will give students information in whatever form they do that and immediately ask them to do something with it. And there’s no like meaning making moment where kids get to sit with that information and like, interpret it, make connections, ask questions right before they’re then asked to like apply it in some way. And I’d love to see more of that meaning making, whether it’s concept maps or it’s writing or it’s conversation or it’s role play or it’s a would you rather this or that kind of option, since we all make meaning kind of differently? I’d love to see more of those scenes in all classrooms.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Oh my gosh, I feel like a bobblehead would be talked to because I just I’m like nodding along like, yeah, this is the it’s that the processing time I forget to build in processing time. Yeah. And how important it is to make connections. The things that we already knew too, talking with kids so that they can make connections. And it’s all about that connection, right? There’s so much, there’s so much that goes into that processing and meaning making. And we just need to make sure that we’re, we’re being intentional about making time for that.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah. Create the space for it. For sure. Now, I have to say, Shane, your reels on Instagram provide. Well, you do a lot of different. I am like so in awe of people who do Instagram like so effortlessly.
Suzy Evans
So impressive. I the same I just watch it on the sidelines and think oh my goodness she’s amazing.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I mean, I’m, I’m in the space, but I see the, the natural way in which you navigate it. And I’m just like, this is amazing stuff. And you do these like bite size PD on the science of learning. How have like the larger, you know, social media audience of educators responded, those do you have like you have to have like a most popular science of learning strategy that you’ve shared on the real. So like I want to hear what’s the response been or are there favorites?
Dr. Shane Saeed
So I think what’s really funny is, you know, we started this work back in 2019 and I’ve been talking about it on my platform since then. It hasn’t really grown into like something where people are interested in it until recently. And I think, you know, just with, where we are in education, people are hearing about it a lot more, which is exciting. So right there, making a connection of like, oh, I’ve heard about that. I’m interested in this real because I want to learn more. And previously it was like, look at this thing. And people are like, cool.
Suzy Evans
Like, I know we would always. Get the questions like, I saw you in your science class. That. And they thought it was something with literal science, like labs. And I was like, oh no, no, no, I don’t yeah, I don’t know how to explain this to you, but it’s nope, it’s not a lab. It’s not biology. We will it is kind of. But it’s cognitive psychology.
Dr. Shane Saeed
And how we connect it to teacher, practices. So what I found is to break that down right? Because it was so big and, there was little background information originally, on that content. And if I just built it really small and said, okay, check out this piece of information, what do you think about this and how does it connect to something that you’ve seen or that you’ve done? Another thing that both Susie and I love doing is we share really low prep, low stakes practices that teachers feel safe trying out, that they can do. Something that we’ve stolen from our math coordinator is the term, not Sunday, but Monday.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I love that.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Which is often. Right. So it’s like the idea of, I want to share something with you that you can immediately turn around and try the next day and see how it goes. So those things I would say like the biggest one that teachers really like, the easiest one is a brain dump. Right? And it’s simple, right? Take some time. We just had some. You took information I want you to process. It’s the processing time I want you to process. I want to write down everything that you can remember. Or in primary. It’s I want you to draw the context that you can remember, where I want you to turn and talk to someone about all the things you can remember about what we just talked about, or even, four steps of Metacognition, which is from the book Powerful Teaching.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I love that book.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Okay. So guidance.
Suzy Evans
It’s what, you know, kicked us. Off. Completely in 2019. I mean, that is kind of our origin story, so to speak, right? In my book. I mean, it really just is was the birth of everything for the two of us.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Yeah. And because it has a really great balance of the research behind why it works, and also again, little practices that you could do tomorrow. Yeah. And see how it goes. And that four steps of metacognition is just a routine right. You could pair it with almost any activity that you do in your classroom. And all it does is it primes students to take a step back before starting looking at the content and just assessing themselves. And yeah, I feel confident about answering that question. I think I might need some support answering this question. I feel really confident about answering, you know, question three and I just taking that step back. One, you’ve already done a lot of self self-assessment of what my I feel really confident about doing. Two you’ve created now I thought process of why know where to start. I can at least get, you know, problems one, three and seven finished. Yeah. Even though I have questions about other ones, I can do those first and then I can go seek out support for the ones that I have questions about. So it’s doing a lot, very little. Right. It’s just teaching a four step routine. And it is incredibly powerful. And so again, it was just like, how do I, I, you know, with the attention span that is on social media. Take something that seems like a heavy lift is into lift and just figuring out how to tell teachers how we just make it intentional, routine and transparent and keep it simple.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I love that. And, you know, we talked about agency. You were talking about science of learning. And I think these are often discussed separately as so many things in education are siloed. Right. But they connected the.
Suzy Evans
Time.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
All the time. And I think that’s why teachers always feel like it’s one more thing or it’s a new initiative, because they’re not woven together for teachers so that they understand how they’re complementary or they kind of work in harmony. And so they do connect really powerfully. Where do you see the strongest overlaps? Like what misconceptions do you see teachers having about student agency or the science of learning, or the two of them together? And how do you kind of help to clarify the connection between the two? Either of you can take this. You want to try to start it, Susie.
Suzy Evans
Sure. I mean, they are like you said, they’re absolutely connected. And I think that is goes back to your first question of we we see that as part of our gift we can give to teachers is to show them how they’re connected and how they’re not in silos, and they feed off each other in the most beautiful ways. Teaching students about the why behind the science of learning practices, helping them understand how their brain works, how learning works, how to be more efficient study ers. And of course, that builds agency, and then agency inspires students to drive their own learning and reflect. And and all of this is building intrinsic motivation. It’s just it’s all the same processes. And and I just with Shane and I both are so passionate about how those work together I think
Dr. Shane Saeed
Yeah. And I think, it’s, it’s teachers taking a step back. Right. We asked students all the time like, hey, we went from unit one unit to unit three. What’s the connection between all three units? We ask students to constantly do that type of thinking, and it’s now about asking teachers to do that type of thinking. So rather than seeing, you know, oh, I have flexible learning spaces and then station rotation and explicit instruction with signs of learning emphasis. Right. And they see those all in separate practices. It’s like no, they all integrate together. And so how are we again shifting our thinking of okay instead of how am I going to fit this in on top of everything else? It’s how do we even I mean, I’ll use that word that you used, Kotlin. How does it weave into what we’re already doing? Because that’s how we’re going to make it feel less heavy. And you’ve already built a lot of routines, expectations, and student, agency and knowhow around what you’re already doing. You don’t want to completely like a piece of that and trying something completely new, right? We’re trying to figure out how to fit it into what they already know how to do.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Suzy Evans
I think it helps to when you have as a, as an educator, a big goal. Right. And I think for myself, when things really shifted for me as a teacher, it was when I decided to laser focus on student agency as my end goal. And everything I did after that point is like, how is this building agency? How is this creating intrinsic motivation and every thing then connected to that? And so whether it was like you said, chain, flexible seating or whether it was whatever it was, it’s I always put in my head, is this building agency then it didn’t feel like silos anymore to me.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
It’s so funny because when I first started, because I almost quit year five, year six, I was like, oh, this is not what I thought I was signing up for. And for me, my word was like engagement. I was like, if I can just figure out how to get these kids engaging with the content, with each other, with me. And that was the same thing. I became laser focused. I was like, I’m gonna, I guess, unlearn all the stuff I thought I knew about teaching because it’s not engaging them. And my end goal is for them to enjoy being here, to engage with each other. The content. It’s so interesting how when you have that kind of focus, it really can be this exciting driver that like frames and focuses your work frames everything.
Suzy Evans
Exactly.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Exactly like our teaching North star.
Suzy Evans
Yeah. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And everything fell into place for me then. And then it stopped feeling like one more thing. It it truly felt like it was a foundational pyramid that was all building up to student agency.
Dr. Shane Saeed
And thinking about the cognitive psychology of that brain shift was just me, like, riffing. But,
Suzy Evans
She’s nerding out, getting everyone I love it, I love it.
Dr. Shane Saeed
But if we think about it, how our brains work, our brains are constantly seeking out patterns. And so, you know, just like the science behind glimmers, if you constantly are noticing happy and positive things throughout your day, small things, you’re training your brain to notice all of the ways that you know positive things are happening in your life. The same can be true about what we do with our teaching instruction, where if we have this lens of is this all? How is this engaging to students? How am I furthering my goal of engagement? Or how am I furthering my goal of honoring student agency? Right? Our our brain is trying to find the patterns of the new content and figure out how does it connect to what you know we’re already doing. Anyways, that’s my nerd out moment. I’m like, it’s just training our brains to think in that way.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah, for sure. And I do love this. The the earlier comment of the interconnectedness and how we help teachers see that. I wish leadership did more of that, because I don’t remember having to write a blog because somebody had said like, well, if you’re doing station rotation and blended learning, like, where’s the explicit teaching? And I was like, what? What? What are you talking like? It’s happening in small groups. You’re differentI is still there, right? But I think there’s so often we think of it’s this thing or that thing is like, no, how are these things working together? So I love that focus. So Susie, another area where I know we are, we spend a lot of our time is that this idea of assessment and how assessment so often feels like it’s something that is done to students, they have no agency over it. And it’s not really done in service of them. And you’ve done a lot of work around metacognition and student ownership. What do you see are the biggest problems with traditional approaches to assessment, and how can some of these metacognitive practices shift how students understand their own learning?
Suzy Evans
I’m always so happy to get this question. I think it is crucial that we reframe assessment for ourselves first, because, you know, we could do a whole nother podcast on the suite of standardized, standardized testing in the country in our educational system. Yes, there is a lot of it. And legitimately it’s not all great. And all of those things. And one of my say, I’m going to nerd out now it’s my turn to turn it up. One of my favorite place pieces of information I’ve ever picked up is the root of the word assessment. And it comes from the Latin. And it means to sit beside the learner and I. It gives me goosebumps. I get emotional and it gives me goosebumps every time I think about it. And I would talk to my even my little first graders about what that means, and they would get goosebumps. And I remember this vividly and it just needs to be reframed first as an educator and then with students. Because if we treat assessment as practice, as a chance to show what we know, a body of evidence measuring growth progress instead of a gotcha, instead of complaining about how much assessment there is, or instead of thinking about it as data, you know, think about data as like a dirty word, right? We can help bring the anxiety down for ourselves. We can help bring it down for students. And I think that brings grading into play too, right? We have to think about grading differently. And where in life is there only a one shot deal on any? Almost nowhere. Think about driving tests. Think about the S.A.T., think about any. You know, you even send a project to your boss. You don’t just get one and that. That’s literally not how life works. You get the email back that says, I want you to make these edits, right? Or you get to take the driving test again, and you take the S.A.T.. I mean, goodness, in our district, Shane, we take the SAT. How many times do they do a practice that’s six or something over.
Dr. Shane Saeed
I mean, it’s over the course, over the.
Suzy Evans
Course of the four years. Oh, yeah.
Dr. Shane Saeed
At least six times.
Suzy Evans
And six times. This. That is how life actually works. So I just think when we make assessment feel punitive or we have, you know, triggers around it ourselves. And I’m not saying they’re not legitimate. And we need to reframe it first before we can get students to think about assessment differently and to truly feel like we are sitting beside them and helping them grow, and using assessment as that measure of growth to drive metacognition. That’s where I that’s in my mind. What assessment needs to feel like.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I think you just spoke to the entire inspiration behind balance with blended learning, because I think I, I think I started that book with like, all the things that are wrong with traditional grading practices and talked about because I use that exact quote, about the side by side assessment routine that I did with students. I was like, if this is a big enough assignment to go in the grade book, which is a high stakes thing, then I want you sitting next to me as I talk through the thing I am grading so you can hear what am I noticing, what’s strong, what’s underdeveloped, or what might need a little more attention? And it was so interesting because I ended up going through this whole journey of like, reimagining my own approach to grading and really building in this ongoing self-assessment for students. So every single week they were spending dedicated time in class, looking at work, going through a self assessment. So it wasn’t just me thinking critically about their work and what it was telling me as the teacher about their skills and ability. It was that metacognitive work for them to be like, this is where I see my growth, this is where I’m kind of stalled and I need support. And this is the kind of support I’d love, because I can’t know that for every kid. I need them to learn how to start to advocate for themselves. So I love that focus on really pulling kids into the process. Have them think about their learning and doing the whole grading thing as much as possible with students, not something that’s done to them.
Suzy Evans
Absolutely. So ironically, we almost need more of it. It needs to be constant, right? Yeah. Truly, I know people are going to be like, no, no, that sounds terrible. But truly we need to do it all the time and talk about it all the time and make it be low stakes when it needs to be low stakes. And Shane and I talk about that constantly, just bring the anxiety down on assessment. So when it is a quote unquote high stakes piece of work, they are ready to to show what they know and, and not panic about it.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah, yeah. Assessments definitely. Anytime you get into assessment and grading because when I talk about the side by side assessment, teachers are like, how on earth would I even do that? I’m like, well, we need to talk about the instructional models that we’re using to create the space for that in classrooms. But I think it’s a really important conversation. So, you know, go ahead. Jean, I was going.
Dr. Shane Saeed
To say that just it makes me think of I get that question a lot of like, well, how, how, how am I going to fit that in? And it’s, how do we look at your time and how it’s structured and that’s how we fit it then?
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah. For sure. So, Shane, you wrote a book, Be the Flame and I want to talk about it. It digs into, like, kind of what it takes to build a strong classroom community from day one. And it’s so interesting because that is definitely something that speaks to a lot of my focus when I’m coaching teachers, because a lot of the the things that we’ve been talking about, releasing control to students around, you know, thinking really intentionally about agency, thinking about building metacognitive processes, even like reimagining, grading and what we grade and how we grade and where we’re grading. And all of that works better when you have this strong classroom community. So when you step back and you look at classrooms today, what feels most urgent for teachers to understand about community building, especially with everything students are kind of metaphorically bringing into the classroom, or you kind of bringing in with them, that we can’t always see.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Yeah. And that’s it’s such a it’s such a good question and such a big question. I think that maybe previously in thinking about relationship building, it was between the teacher and student, right. A possible 1 to 1 relationship. And what’s really important is we need to create a safe environment and space for learning, because learning is it’s, it’s kind of scary. There’s a lot of risk that we take, and making mistakes in especially I would say the education system that has been created societally is you have to be right. And if you are not right, you are wrong and being wrong and bad, right? Whereas we are trying to reframe again, reframing assessment is being wrong. Bad being wrong is learning. And then, okay, what am I going to do with this newfound knowledge? Okay, that wasn’t correct. Where am I going next to be able to learn what is correct? Right. So when I think about building relationships, it’s really about how are we building community, on the students to create that safe environment for collaboration, for normalizing mistake making, so that you can have those, honest corrective conversations in the moment as you’re going and as you’re teaching and students aren’t feeling attacked or, you know, they were being singled out or it’s not scary and they are having a visceral reaction to it, because if they have a visceral reaction to it now, we’ve put them into their lizard brain and they’re not learning anything.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Right.
Dr. Shane Saeed
So we want it to create, a safe space and that it’s foundational to everything. And you said, I mean, you said it so beautifully of everything that we do from the metacognitive processes to collaboration. But that we also can build it not just at the beginning of the year with the fun. Community building activities. Those are component of it, right? Just like we introduce anything I would say, like cooperative structures you introduce with nonacademic content so that the focus is, do I have the structure? And now I can add academic content, but we can still continue to build our, community with students. During academic content time. My favorite part of doing that is teaching students how to collaborate. You know, I put them into heterogeneous groups, and they we work on how to work with one another and not just in proximity next to one another. Right. Yeah. And I’ll go in and I coach right alongside each of those small groups, and they’re working with academic content, but we’re also having that small group discussion of are you actually talking about the work? Are you checking in with one another? Are you seeing what step you think is next? Are you agreeing and disagreeing? All of those things are really important. And in order to do those things, you have to really spend time setting really explicit expectations around, like, what did it look like? What does it not look like, making sure that you’re using common language. So I’m saying, are we actively participating to students. Know what that means?
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Shane Saeed
And my favorite is when you start to use that you introduce it explicitly. You use the common language, and then you’ll have some. We have different types of people. Okay. So how are we going to invite them in to actively participate. And so all of that might happen. Right. The fun stuff happens at the beginning of the year. I kind of, as you said at the beginning of the podcast and towards like October especially, you’re in content, but you’re still supporting students to get there with the community, building with your expectations. But we continue to to have those conversations throughout the year. It’s not something that you do at the beginning of the year, and you leave it at the beginning of the year and you continue going. It’s something that continues. Just the content in which you were, using it with is now academic. And so it’s like you go from this building, community building Stem challenges to match groups and actually students working together on their, you know, work problem skills.
Suzy Evans
Right? It’s not one and done right. It’s not silos. We keep it again, we’re connecting all the the conversation, which is beautiful because it isn’t just at the beginning of the year, like you said, Jane, it’s it that’s where you start it. But then you continue to build community every day. You continue to reframe assessment every day. These are all the same conversations, and they all work together to create student agency and and ownership. It’s all part of the same beautiful cycle.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Well, and I love that we’re also reminding teachers, listening that the community building, it doesn’t have to just be the ice breakers and they get to know you. It should be threaded through the entire school year in the ways in which we engage students around the content. Right. I don’t think that’s necessarily something a lot of teachers are maybe like thinking about intentionally is like, oh, if I organize learning activities this way, it will continue to nurture and build community among my learners. And I will say, I love your kind of the description of the explicit teaching chain, because I even pulled in when I was having my kids learn how to do some of these cooperative learning structures, how to interact with each other. I always ended it with a self assessment. How did you show up today in this group? Like what did you do? Well, and sometimes, my sister works at Netflix and they do this like 360 feedback loop where everybody gives feedback to the people that they work with. And so then I was like, I’m going to try that. When there’s group work, when kids are collaborating, they’re going to assess themselves. And then they’re also going to give each other feedback about how they felt the the group functioned. And individual members of the group function. And it was a really great way to again, layer in that metacognitive piece. Right?
Dr. Shane Saeed
Yeah. And it has a sense of accountability to of we’re learning this together and we’re we’re a community of learners. And so therefore we must all engage. And, it’s it’s not that you’re going to be called out. You’re going to be called in. We’re going to say, what can we do to support you exactly, to engage you in this process.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I love that. So you both stepped in to host brain waves, which I have been on a few times over the course of, the last decade, probably super popular podcast. So I have to ask, stepping into the role, hosting a really popular podcast with a strong identity, a really loyal audience. What was that transition like? How did you kind of make the show your own without kind of losing what maybe listeners expected before, or what they loved about the show before? I just, I know, I know that hosting a podcast is not nothing. And so I just want to hear your guys’s experience with that.
Suzy Evans
Oh my gosh. I mean, I have to quote Armageddon movie. It was like for me. I was scratching. It was like the scariest environment imaginable. Honestly, when we first. Were. Approached with this project, we were so excited, of course, but we knew we had such huge shoes to fill. I mean, Ben called and Becky Peters were great hosts and they’re genius in launching this podcast for the district. We were so grateful that they did this. And that was one of the reasons that we decided to have Ben as our first guest when we took over is because we really did want to honor all the work that they did and let listeners, you know, hear his voice again. I mean, people this happened all during Covid. He ended up moving to Michigan, and so people didn’t even know he had left. Really? So, I mean, it was a beautiful move for him and his family and, and we so we did that purposely to just kind of create that transition. And we also wanted to bring our own stamp to things. And we decided to, to alternate between educational giants, so to speak. Like yourself. We love having you on. But then bring teachers from our district as follow up. So we alternate now and that I think we have kind of found our own little groove, so to speak, wouldn’t you say, Shane?
Dr. Shane Saeed
Yeah. And I mean, when we first were brainchild, like, how do we keep what is amazing about the podcast, but also, you know, honor the fact that we are two different people and it does need to look like a tiny bit different. We called it big waves in many ways. That we have our. Big educational giant who brings the great ideas and content. And then the mini way we’re supposed to honor the teachers doing the work in the classrooms and having really tangible ideas again, to try and implement the following day. So that was really important to us that we brought in teacher voice. And we’ve actually the feedback has been really positive on the teacher voice that we get to hear, where the ideas came from, from the educational giant, and then how does it actually look in different classrooms. And we try it first. It was just one teacher, and then we started saying, maybe we could do teachers of different levels and so on. Those teacher follow up episodes, you’ll hear at least, you know, elementary, secondary, or perhaps, you know, teachers in, specialist. So like, we’ve had PE teacher and art teachers and particular counselors, special education teachers, we want it to be something that’s multifaceted, that, you know, it’s not just general classroom teachers doing this incredible work. It’s everyone.
Suzy Evans
It’s everyone. And and the follow up to your just recent appearance on the show was one of my favorites. We you, of course, talked about AI and how we’re leveraging AI in the classrooms. And then we have so many incredible teachers doing that work here every day. And so our last episode with an elementary a middle and a high school teacher talking about what they’re doing in, you know, detail every day with and how they’re truly leveraging AI to inspire their students, I think is one of my favorite episodes ever.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Oh, very cool. I have to check that one out. And if anybody listening has not heard brain Waves yet, it is spectacular. And there has to be hundreds and hundreds of. Episodes at this point.
Suzy Evans
There’s a lot. We’re in year eight. Yes, I bet, and Becky used to do what, 16 a year? We we definitely said that’s not happening.
Dr. Shane Saeed
I can’t do that many.
Suzy Evans
You can do that. Right? Eight. We shoot eight. Because we do have these other full time jobs. And so, you. Know, that was kind of at the end there, that was really their only thing that they were doing. And hats off to them, because the books that obviously come, you have to read the book and you have to do all those things. It’s intense. And the and they were doing all their own editing, which we also have farmed out.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Nice, which is really exciting. We have high school interns that are in our P-tech program, and so they also get the experience of editing a real podcast that they put on their resume. And so we’ve had now three different, student editors over the last four years.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yeah. That’s amazing, I love that. Okay, so we’re coming close on time. So I’m going to ask you the question I always end the show with, and I will let you start us off. Shane. So you guys are juggling a ton. All everybody in education is. And most people in general are, are there any things that you do routines and mindsets? Whatever tips that you have for trying to strive for some semblance of a healthy work life balance?
Dr. Shane Saeed
Okay. Suzy is going to laugh at me because this is my favorite tip to share with people and her and, my her husband and myself have this in common. So we do that. I plan my outfits out for the entire week on Sunday, to cut down on decision fatigue. So over the course of the entire week, I find that I get really tired. And, you know, we just get more and more exhausted. So I do a lot of planning and prepping on Sundays. So I’ll look at my schedule and the weather, and I will plan out all of my outfits for the week.
Suzy Evans
I know, is this the best I. Love so much?
Dr. Shane Saeed
And then, I will put it out, right? I just look at my list, what do I have planned? And I can put it out the night before so it’s ready to roll. I’m meal prep all of my meals for the week on Sundays. Just lunches. So that I can just grab and go. So I know that I’m always going to be filled. Because a lot of times when we get busy, I don’t know about any of you all. I just don’t eat.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yep. I’m the same way.
Dr. Shane Saeed
So this is a way to make sure that I, eat. And then I make sure I go to the gym 4 to 6 times a week. So depending on like, what is after school and you know, what professional development we’re facilitating, I really try to make that happen to keep my brain happy. And so if I cut down on depression, fatigue and I keep my my body moving, I find that, I maintain a much better work life balance. I’m still working towards balance.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yes, yes. And I will say, if anybody wants to check out Shane’s adorable outfits for the week, those are also on Instagram. They’re so cute with a breakdown of what she’s. Wearing, which I was like, I can’t even this is horrible.
Suzy Evans
I know, it’s amazing. Again, super inspiring.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
All right, Suzy, how about you?
Suzy Evans
So I this this is where Shane and I totally have yin and yang. She is so great about those little details. And I am a little more above, like up in the clouds, so to speak. And I think about when I saw this question from you, my first thought was giving yourself grace first and foremost, because things look so different at different life stages. I’m empty nesting right now, so I have a lot more time to devote to work. If I’m in the groove on something and that’s that’s a luxury sometimes where you’re. Last night I went home and cranked something out until seven, where, you know, when I had young kiddos at home, that wasn’t happening, obviously. And so I think we need to find our people first. And foremost to right find your village. No judgment ever about what stage of life you’re in, because that’s not helpful or inspiring to anybody. Just knowing that we’re all dedicated educators and no matter what stage of the career you’re in, you’re giving it your all. And so I think the scale sometimes is more weighted on work or it’s more weighted on the personal, like a seesaw, almost more than a scale, and it goes up and down naturally and just lean in to whatever side is fueling your passions at the moment. It is all I can say.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
I love that I actually just had a conversation with The Graduate students are wrapping up the end of our semester, and he’s about to start applying for jobs. And he just said, I feel like I’m so gassed here at the end. I wish I was like doing it better. And I was like, you’ve been in this program working your butt off for like over a year and your student teaching like to your point, Suzy, give yourself grace. And then I was like, and then remember, give your students grace. Because they’re going to have. These days, too. And this is a great empathy building kind of exercise. So I love, love that advice. Thank you guys so much for being here. It was an absolute pleasure to talk with you. I feel like we could go on talking for another hour.
Dr. Shane Saeed
Yes. Yeah. Everything. Us. Yes.
Suzy Evans
This was really a highlight for us. We were thrilled to have you ask us on.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
Yay! Wonderful. Well, thank you. I really feel like the three of us could just have kept chatting for a whole nother hour. There are so many overlaps in the things that we’re passionate about that we focus on when we work with educators, whether it’s student agency assessment, metacognitive skill building, the science of learning. But I think as I reflect on this conversation, the piece that really stands out is just how interconnected so many of these things are and how incredibly important it is for schools in districts to have people who are focused on helping educators connect those dots, helping to break down some of the strategies in the instructional approaches in a way that feels manageable for teachers. Too often, as we said in this episode, things are kind of siloed in education, and educators are just too busy to try to put all these puzzle pieces together. And so leadership instructional coaches, coordinators are incredibly valuable in that equation, helping teachers to understand how to take research back strategies and incorporate them into the work they’re already doing with their students to make them more intentional and to make the work that they’re doing with kids even more effective. So. So incredibly grateful to have these two on the podcast to talk about their work. Some of the insights that they’ve gained through supporting teachers in these, various practices that we talked about, as always, want to thank you guys for spending this time with me and joining me for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you have any questions, any comment, any feedback for me, you can reach out and find me online. I’m on X at @Catlin_Tucker, I’m on Instagram at @CatlinTucker. Or you can always find me on my website. CatlinTucker.com. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
Dr. Catlin Tucker
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