Podcast Episode
Episode Description
In this episode, I sit down with bestselling author and educator John Spencer to talk about the power of deep learning in today’s classrooms.
We discuss insights from his book The Depth Advantage and explore why meaningful, relevant work is key to engaging students and helping them sustain focus and effort. Our conversation also dives into the role of AI in learning, including how it can provide powerful supports, such as unlimited feedback, while still preserving the productive struggle students need to grow. John shares his perspective on the system constraints teachers face and how educators can still create space for deeper learning within those realities.
Connect with Dr. John Spencer and consider joining his newsletter to receive free resources! http://spencereducation.com
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.
Catlin Tucker
Welcome to The Balance. I’m Doctor Catlin Tucker, and today my guest is Doctor John Spencer, who began his career in education as a middle school teacher, kind of teaching a little bit of everything, as you’ll hear all about, and is currently a full-time professor at the university level. He’s a bestselling author, and I have been familiar with John’s work for probably the last 10 to 15 years. He shares some of the most thoughtful and aesthetically impressive pieces with educators. I always find his ideas so grounding and useful and just exquisitely presented. So I am just thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with him today about his work. Well, I’m so excited to finally connect with you. I guess not in person, but at least online at the same time. I would love for you to share just kind of your journey in education with listeners, like where you started your career as like a middle school teacher. Now you’re working as a professor. So any and all information about how you got to what you’re doing today, I would love to hear.
Dr John Spencer
Yeah. So I started out in Phoenix, Arizona. I was at a Title I school. I taught social studies and one group of reading intervention. So mostly social studies, but a little bit of reading intervention. And that’s really where I started with my edtech journey. I would say, and it didn’t begin with a love of tech per se. It began with a love of project-based learning, digital composition, things like that. So it was, how could we use the tech to deepen the learning? And I ran into something called Project Impact, and we had this thing called Social Voice Studios. And we did this co-curricular PBL service-learning thing along with, like I said, a lot of creative projects as well. And then I taught all subjects self-contained, so I had every eighth grader who was gifted, special ed, or EL. And so I did that for a while, and then I helped create and taught our digital journalism class and our STEM class. So that was my that was my little school journey.
Catlin Tucker
A little bit of everything.
Dr John Spencer
A little bit of everything, but always middle school. Never leadership, never. I had no desire to do any of that kind of stuff. And then for the last, I guess I’m in year number 11 right now. I’ve been at the university level.
Catlin Tucker
Wow. I think you and I have a lot of similarities. I also am probably the least “I love tech, edtech, blended learning” person. Like for me it was always, wow, look at this vehicle that I can use to get out from the front of the room. And now kids have all this access to information and to resources and to cool tools online that I can leverage to really position them at the center of learning. But it definitely has never been about the tech for me either. I’m so much more excited about what we can do because it’s there.
Dr John Spencer
Exactly, exactly.
Catlin Tucker
And also never had any interest in like principal, superintendent. I was just like everything I don’t love about my job as a teacher. I feel like that’s all they have to deal with all day long. So no thank you.
Dr John Spencer
You hit a point where you’re like, “I’m really good at classroom management.” My students are really self-directed. I’m teaching in this very project-based approach. I’m conferencing with the kids. They’re doing enough. All these things are great. And then the notion of switching from that to dealing with discipline nonstop. Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. It was a hard no hard pass.
Catlin Tucker
Exactly. So you work at the university level like what are you teaching and you share all the time online. So is that kind of your source of inspiration for the resources you create and share with educators?
Dr John Spencer
Yeah. So I mean, I think I’ve been sharing stuff online for a long time. The way I think about it is, you know, when I was a kid, I would, I would dream of, I guess you could say, like, content creation, like, what did I want to do? I was like, someday it would be cool if I could have a radio show. Someday I can make videos. And then mostly like, what would it look like if I get to be an author? And so like, for me, even when I was a pre-service teacher, way back in the day, I started my first blog. It was called a weblog at the time, right? And I had to like hand code aspects of it, but oh.
Catlin Tucker
My gosh.
Dr John Spencer
I know. But it wasn’t the tech that I loved. It was this like, Oh my gosh, I can share with others and they can check out my my blog. And it was called musings from a Not So Master Teacher. That was an original name.
Catlin Tucker
I love that.
Dr John Spencer
And like so I’ve always written, I’ve always shared. And then I started to realize like, oh, I have resources that I could share and I have frameworks. And it got a lot more practical and less just personal storytelling. And so I think for me, the process of like research, action writing or, or creating, they’re all so interconnected because that’s part of that, that content creation side, the blogging side, the writing side, the reflecting. That was part of how I learned how to be a better teacher.
Catlin Tucker
Right? Sure. Yes.
Dr John Spencer
And so it now informs what I do at the university level. And I kind of teach everything at the university level, like I teach lesson planning, assessment, classroom management. And then I have these elective classes that are edtech, project-based, you know, certain things that are definitely in my wheelhouse. I have, a couple of AI related courses that I teach as well, but I kind of teach everything, and I really love that because it keeps me from, I would say, getting bored, like, and it keeps me it keeps that knowledge fresh about like, okay, what are the challenges? What are the struggles? What are new strategies to try out? Like? I think it’s all interconnected for me.
Catlin Tucker
I love that. Okay. So I have always just admired, well, one, the quality of things that you share, but also the esthetic. So anybody listening who has not encountered John’s work, it is the most beautiful, aesthetically pleasing. I mean, just it feels like art work teaching you about how to teach. So tell me, just like briefly, what inspired your like visual design, your esthetic? Like what is your creative process like? Because I see some of your stuff and I think, Holy smokes, John must have spent just, just a massive amount of time creating this little beautiful artifact that you like, push pushed into the world.
Dr John Spencer
So I would say, like, I’ve always been a doodler. You know, I remember basically taking sketch notes in high school.
Catlin Tucker
Oh, wow.
Dr John Spencer
Or for note taking and then having to read those and convert them into the Cornell notes that the teachers required. Right. You know, just so funny. But like I it was never the way I made sense out of things. I wonder, you know, how much of it has to do with ADHD, how much of it has to do with just like the way my brain works? And so I’ve always been someone who processes information with visuals. And then in the classroom, it really began with teaching L. I mean, many of my students were English learners from the get go and wanting visuals and then like downloading icons online and realizing that what I wanted, there was no picture. There was no picture for think pair share. There was no picture for, you know, whatever it may be. And then also, like, this was so long ago that all of the like profile icons of like individual partnered small group, they were all white and so it came from it literally a necessity of, oh, I guess I have to draw this for my slideshows. And then, I was like, I can’t have these, like, flat icons with my drawings. So I just started drawing everything and now it’s I’m to a place where, like, I sketch so fast that it really doesn’t take me a long time to, to put together stuff like that. Yeah.
Catlin Tucker
So you’re just you have like this artistic thing that’s always been part of what you do. And it’s so interesting hearing you talk about your sketch notes. I had actually a grad student in one of my courses who, you know, the classic, you have to read this, you need to take notes. They didn’t demand in her previous courses at Cornell Notes, but she had to have proof of note taking. And she hated the experience. And in my class, they had, three, like a three option choice board of like, yeah, you can take traditional kind of Cornell style notes. You can do sketch notes, you can do. There was another option and she started submitting these gorgeous, just like pictures of these sketches she was doing. And she wrote me this note about just like, thank you for letting me do it this way, because she just needed that visual processing as well. So for any teacher listening, maybe thinking about a would you rather option for our kiddos who want the sketch note possibility? Well that’s awesome. That’s really interesting. I just always I don’t even think I realized you were drawing these things. I was just like, how is he creating me? These beautiful things you share. So.
Dr John Spencer
Oh, thank you. It’s kind of interesting. I’ll say something about the, the options. You know, that’s where I think, like, you and I have a, a big overlap is choice boards, you know, UDL, student choice, student voice. And I think there’s something to be said about providing a gradual release of options. Right. So 2 or 3 options. Don’t want to hear choice overload. And then you can modify your options. And then eventually you can have more freedom in general in all of those different domains. And so like I see a lot of teachers and it’s it’s a great first step providing a choice menu for assignments or free topics, but also choice for how you organize things, choice for how you put things together. I would love to see more, more avid classes teach students that like you could you could keep a binder, but you could also have folders. You could also have this. You can like I hate binders. Yeah, I will break binder. It’s like I don’t know why but like they get like this and they get oh.
Catlin Tucker
Yes, I know what you mean.
Dr John Spencer
But I’m a like I’m a folder and note card person. And I like to lay stuff out visually and like, and so I think when we, when we consider the role of student choice, it should be not just choosing the topics or even choosing an assignment, but choosing the processes, that you’re going to use, choosing the organizational structures, things like that to.
Catlin Tucker
Well, because they’re very well in a lot of places are not actually explicitly taught different organizational strategies. Right. And so I think one of the things that is important as well, when I, when I talk to my, my students is on board them, give them like a week with each strategy, let them practice and let them see how it works and kind of like have those built in reflective moments. And then once you’ve onboarded them to a set of strategies around how to do something, then let them choose at that point, right? Like I tell the story of, I used to be like that militant, English teacher, you have to annotate and you have to do traditional annotations. And my kids were like, we hate this, we hate this. And finally, like, I just was like starting to do more of my own growth as an educator and thinking about, okay, what are other ways they could really interact with these tasks in a meaningful way? And then I did that. I kind of like chose three strategies I thought would appeal to different kinds of learners, onboarded them to each one, and then for the rest of the year they could choose. And I literally at when I did, my entire survey went from having the majority of kids be like, what’s the thing you want to do? Lots of annotations be like, maybe two or like, I don’t like active reading or whatever, but it was so interesting. The barriers that you can lower when you’re really thinking about it. And I talk a lot about this when it comes to like meaning making, which I feel is a step in the learning process in classrooms that we skip a lot, but just acknowledging that, like, there are so many different ways that students make meaning and how do we, you know what I mean? How do we honor that? Right? Because as an internal processor versus a verbal processor, it’s totally different.
Dr John Spencer
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, definitely. And you talk so you do talk a lot about engagement and kind of disengagement and even, you know this idea that it goes beyond agency. You speak to kind of the lack of ownership self-direction in classrooms. So for it maybe educators listening to us right now, we’re like a little bit hesitant to release control and start building in more of those meaningful choices. Like, how do you message to them about the importance of what we should be creating in classrooms to combat some of this lack of engagement that frustrates so many teachers?
Dr John Spencer
I think I would I would begin by saying, you know, the challenges are real. They’re they’re not they’re not made up. We need to recognize that there are a lot of factors going on. One of them is a lack of engagement, for sure. Also a lack of self-direction, also a lack of resilience. Right. Getting started. And then they give up too easily. So all of these challenges, they’re real and they’ve increase. And what’s to blame is always up in the air. You know, some people it’s the TikTok generation. It’s instant feedback. It’s, smartphones, whatever that may be. It’s a generation when they’re really young, raised on iPads and too much screen time for others. They say, you know, look, they experienced some really rough times during COVID. There was learning loss. The the approach of hybrid and blended learning was never as effective as it should have been. Right? It was. It was not blended. It was emergency remote. Right. It’s very different. Right? It was a very different thing. So all of these different factors that, you know, could be parenting styles. And I hear all of the different reasons why. But I think that we as educators need to look at that and say, okay, in a world of smart machines, in a world of instant information and all of this, what will our students need? And the deeper reality is they will need to be self-directed. They will need to be adaptable. They will need to engage in deep work that requires deeper problem solving. So the way I think about it is the challenges are very real. And the solution to those challenges is not to try to compete with the entertainment tech. It’s to provide a viable alternative of deeper learning. And if we go back to the just the engagement piece, like Philip Schlechty talked about the notion of engagement being your commitment level and your attention or your focus. Right. And the reality is we need that at a baseline level. Improve that engagement first or that focus first and then move into the rest of those core areas of deeper learning. And so what does that look like. It gives it involves students having compelling reasons. To want to learn it connects to motivation. And so it’s it’s novelty. It’s challenge. It’s deeper problems that matter to them. It’s relevance. All of those factors on the commitment level that that why then you can design the perfect lesson that hammers those. And students still then need to develop the habit of attention. And that’s incremental right.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Dr John Spencer
And and some of this is not new. Right. I remember teaching reading intervention and yes we did phonics and blending. We would we would spend ten minutes a day on phonics work. And yes they were eighth graders. But the fascinating thing was looking across the board in the district at test scores. In the first ten questions on the reading test, our district despite being low income and all of the sudden we were on average meets or exceeds some students were approaching. None were falls far below.
Catlin Tucker
Wow.
Dr John Spencer
In the last ten it was completely it was the complete inverse. Right. So what did that tell you? It’s the reading stamina thing. It’s a reading endurance thing. And so one of the things I did is I worked with an amazing librarian. We focused as much as possible on high interest reading. And then literally built up from 90 seconds without stopping to 25 minutes.
Catlin Tucker
Wow.
Dr John Spencer
And then and so like, what does that tell you? It’s a little bit like working out. It’s a little bit like any kind of thing that’s habitual. You have to take small incremental steps. And so if kids are struggling with focus, I’m not surprised. But if they have a compelling reason why, then we can move into that zone of let’s build it up incrementally to get them to a place at a deeper focus. And then we can see things like the resilience to problem solving, the communication, all those other deeper learning skills. But it’s got to start with that deeper focus first.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that you highlighted, work with a librarian. I find in my like supporting schools, librarians, media specialists, whatever title they’re going. They’re just like incredible and often super underutilized resources on a campus. And I love this idea of like, let’s find that compelling. Why whatever literature that’s going to get kids wanting to spend a little bit more time every single day. And such a good reminder of it’s about building stamina. It’s about building habits. Because I don’t think it’s productive to just say, oh, this generation has no attention span. They just watch 30, 62nd videos. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s like, yes, we absolutely can do something about it, because this is what they’re doing in classrooms is not and is not for entertainment, right? It is for them to engage with ideas and each other. So I love that messaging. And you wrote a book called The Depth Advantage. Yeah. And you kind of talked a little bit about what deeper learning means and how we, you know, what forms it might take in a classroom. But you and I both know that our current system is so not built for deeper learning. Right. And that any time I veer into conversations with educators or I’m in my workshops and I’m highlighting things that would definitely require kids to really commit and wrestle and sit in spaces of productive struggle. The immediate knee jerk response is, I don’t have time for that, right? Because they’re under such bombastic pressure to move through curriculum. So I know you travel around a ton and you, you speak and you consult. Like how do you speak to that? Like what moves can educators who are like, I want to do this. Like, I see the value, but I’m stuck in this system. Like what moves can they start to make within the constraints of the system, to start to provide more of that kind of those deeper learning moments in classrooms that maybe they can build on?
Dr John Spencer
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s it’s not an accident that you see so many deeper learning moments happening in extracurricular classes. Right. Or you’ll see them at certain private schools where the constraints are different. Right. So given that reality, I think we do have to recognize that, like, that’s not an excuse when a teacher says, I have a crowded curriculum map, I’m being tested. Like all of those factors, those policy and systems pieces are definitely real. But within the constraints that we have, we can be creative. And I think that’s what we as educators can do. So there’s a couple of things. One is we can really be intentional about choosing our power standards and connecting standards. You know, I see too many examples of students working through every standard individually.
Catlin Tucker
Isolation yet, but in.
Dr John Spencer
Isolation, without enough time to do whatever. You know, like that comparison I gave, which is not great, but like, it would be like if a PE class said, like, we’re going to, we’re going to run. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to start with, just a day on the difference between pro NATing and Super NATing. And then we’re going to do a day focused on shoe wear and then like and then we won’t get to run until like 2 to 2 weeks into it. Right.
Catlin Tucker
Like or maybe never. Maybe we never ever run.
Dr John Spencer
Maybe we never run, which a lot of kids would be fine with. But right, like there’s some level where I’m like, we have to we have to spend less time talking, more time doing. There needs to be more rehearsal more and coding at the at the student level. And that requires us picking out the standards that matter the most and then finding the connecting standards that you use while you hit those higher, higher standards. The other piece is sometimes it’s messy things that make a difference. So I am a huge fan of going competency based and using compacting. Compacting is used all the time with gifted learners. Why is it not being used with a student who is in the special ed program, who has mastered a quarter of the standards going into the school year and needs a lot of additional time compact and with I, it is easier than ever for us to develop the resources to make compacting a reality. So if we just take the busiest, like let’s just say math and reading, we’ll make those the ones that you hear the most often. We have so much to teach, I would say what if we did compacting. Like what if we really focused on that and if that’s too much to pull off on a daily basis, let’s do regular teaching three days a week. Let’s do compacting two other days a week. Or like I work with a, third grade teacher. And she was in my cohort and, you know, classroom management chaos. It was too much for her, for her entry point to compacting. And she set up a learner profile. And then she used AI to develop skill practice with answer keys and explanations for parental figures. And so every kid got two homework assignments a week that, that were based only on the standards that they hadn’t mastered.
Catlin Tucker
Oh, I love that.
Dr John Spencer
And so she was like, and then when she saw success, she was like, I’m going to do this every Friday now. And then she was like, I’m going to do it every Monday and Friday. And then suddenly she’s like, I’m going to compact three days a week like so. But for her, I get it. Like she’s trying to get kids to like, not talk when she’s talking. Right? Right. If she had three room clears last week, like things are not easy for her in her third grade class, right? That was like huge gains. And so the upside of that kind of compacting is, you know, you’re literally buying time.
Catlin Tucker
Okay. So for anybody listening who’s like, I don’t I’ve literally never heard compacting curriculum compacting. Yeah. Give us like a brief overview.
Dr John Spencer
So the way that I did it with math I’ll give it as an example is you might have the standards related to linear equations. Right. So, and I’ll just make some up. But it’s like can you solve a linear equation. Can you identify a linear equation looking at a graph or using a table. Can you graph a linear equation like we’ll just make those the for power standards. For linear equations there’s other pieces but that’s the main piece. So each one of those is converted into a student friendly objective right or learning goal learning target whatever you want to call it.
Catlin Tucker
I can statement whatever I.
Dr John Spencer
Can say you’re going to change the words left and right. Yeah. But, and then you have their mastery level, like where are they from? Falls below two approaches, two meets, two exceeds. And you say if your, on our pretest we’ll just do a pretest. So we’re going old school traditional test. Yep. On our pretest if you got every one of them right and you got exceeds, you will not spend any time on that matter. If you’re if you’re meets we’re going to do a single one to or like maybe 1 to 3. Review problems a week to make sure it’s it’s fresh and you don’t forget it. And then if you are approaches or falls below, you’re going to spend more time on those pieces. And I remember being terrified that it was going to work. I remember I remember being, you know, super scared. I was brand new to teaching math. And then all of my students ended up being approaches are higher on the final district benchmark. And then by the end of the second quarter, they all met and people were coming in. They were like, what is he doing differently in terms of how he’s teaching? And there were a couple of things I did differently. I did fewer problems that were more challenging. I did a few things that I won’t get into here teaching the verb tenses because my students, many of them were ill. They didn’t. They couldn’t access word problems, not because of vocab, but because of the past perfect progressive verb tense, right or right things that were like so. So I did that, but really like it was I bought time and I remember people would come in and they would visit and I would say, like, nothing you see here is going to be magical. There are people in this building who are far superior math teachers than me. They’ve been doing it longer. They have better strategies. They have it more figured out. I just have more time because I’m doing compacting.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And the thing is, okay, so there’s like two levels when I think about this. One is I if you’ve got PLCs, if you’ve got really strong departments like do that work of identifying what are those priority or those the target standards, the ones we are going to hit really hard? I also, I think one of the things that was kind of a bummer when Common Core came out that I was excited about was the kind of the mirroring of lots of the literacy standards between English, history, science. And I was like, oh, how great! If we’re all hitting these, then we don’t have to, like, maybe spend as much time because they’re getting them in these three different subject areas. And I still think even though some of our standards are very different, and different states obviously have different approaches, it’s like, can we even get departments collaborating around where are the where’s the overlap between our sets of standards, where we can share more of that responsibility without feeling like we’re the ones owning the standard? If kids don’t get it in English or science or wherever, they’re not going to get it. And then to your point, when I think about compacting, it’s like I really approach it like, are you using pre assessments? Are you getting really clear about what you’re going to teach in this unit, so you can identify where you have to lean in with certain kids and spend more time in small groups where you don’t have to cover things with certain kids. But a lot of times that assessment piece isn’t really pre-assessment piece isn’t necessarily happening. And so then, yeah, teachers are just feeling like I got to cover everything with every single kid and some of the kids where we could really lean in and do that differentiation around the skills, where they are needing the support and the instruction. It’s like then we create the space for students talking about that relevance and deep learning, where they could dive deep into a project or an exploration or some kind of maker, a lab, whatever you want it to be, and create more of that space. So I love that you highlighted that. Love it. And yeah, no. So fun. But I can imagine teachers being like, I have not heard this. Like, how would I go about doing that? And then also the juggle of like, it’s, I think scary for teachers to have students in different places in a classroom. Right. And how to manage that. But when kids are getting the complexity, the rigor, hopefully at a level that meets what they need, they stay more engaged right in what’s happening. That’s the goal.
Dr John Spencer
Yeah. And I think there’s that deeper reality of that’s what creates productive struggle, not rushing them through a standard and then having them fail and never getting to redo it and then having them practice what they already know. That doesn’t lead to productive struggle. Productive struggle happens when they have that extended time and they feel like they have the extended time to do that. Now it works best when there’s like a relevant thing to work on, right? I give the example of math. There’s an awful lot of math word problems that are just awful problems because they are just rife with, like fake context. Right? They’re not the way people actually use math. And so kids don’t get excited about that because no one is buying 21 watermelons, right? Like that. All right. And daddy cares how fast two trains are going. Like right there. Things that are just not necessary. And so some of it really does still come down to making sure it’s relevant. It’s challenging. It’s interesting to them. But then when they see success like that becomes a motivator as well. Right. Yes. I mean good at something makes you like to do it better. Being bad at something makes you not particularly enjoy doing something like that’s kind of part of how motivation works.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. Oh my gosh. You were just reminding me at one of the like when I remember listening to Dan Myers speak, who is just like the way he talks about math. I just could listen to him forever. And I don’t consider myself a super math mind, but talking about like the challenges with the way math is presented in textbooks and, it’s just it’s so I think what’s interesting is I’ll never forget when NoRedInk came out and it was like grammar practice online. It was very, very new, and it would wrap the grammar practice in stuff kids cared about, like when they went into NoRedInk, they were like, “I like Harry Potter. I like whatever this sports team is.” And then all of the scenarios were like wrapped in language around stuff they had said they enjoy. So it’s still grammar practice, but it was like wrapped in a lens of interest. And I think about some of these math problems and how great I could be to give some of that, like a bit of a makeover, like, how do we make this feel more relevant for kids? So it’s a scenario that feels like something they might encounter in their lives outside of school, which is unfortunately feels super rare in a math classroom. When you look at the curriculum often.
Dr John Spencer
Yeah. And I think, like, I still remember a moment because like I said, I ended up teaching self-contained and we would do, a short I it was, I think it was a half an hour a day of, grammar practice, but it was verb tenses. So it was a new verb tense. Every week. And we start with simple. Then we move to more complex ones. And so I taught them the verb tense formulas. I taught them in the context of when we use them. But then someone would be answering a question like, what will you have accomplished by the time you turn blank? And they’re excited to talk about that. And I still remember like the we called it grammar. Like that’s what it was called, the subject area. And I so remember the principal walked in and she said, what is your favorite subject to this one student? And this girl is like, I love grammar. And oh my, the principal was like, no, no, I don’t think you. Is that really what you mean? And she’s like, Oh my gosh, in grammar. And she starts listing all the topics. So we got to talk about. Right. And the things that we read, the things that we got into the podcast that she created, the, the videos, the blog posts that they wrote. And so really it was like, how do we make this verb tense fascinating to kids? And the upside of language arts and math in particular is unlike other subjects, they are topic neutral. Right. Language arts can 100% be about Minecraft. It cannot be about like math can. Yeah. And so I share that because I think, once we move from always saying like, how do I make it interesting to how do I tap into their interests. It becomes even more relevant for them.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, Yeah. I love that. I love the idea of this kind of mentality of like almost co-creation with kids, you know, finding out what kind of lights them up. And I think one of the, the challenges that and I think one of the reasons I’ve always kind of, really spent time with, like, how do we put agency into like, formats that feel doable for teachers is that I want to make it interesting and relevant for kids, but not necessarily know if this one pathway is going to do it. And I just I love the idea of engaging kids in the conversation and the creation. Yes. You know, and so much of what you describe in your work, but in that book too, like around curiosity and problem solving, resilience, collaboration, communication, self-direction, all of it feels so extra. I mean, always important, but so extra important right now, when we think about these kids leaving classrooms and going out into an increasingly AI rich world, and I’m worry about do they have the skills that they need to navigate that the skills that, quite frankly, employers are saying that like they want in in their their hires. Right. All of those human skills becomes so much more important and valuable, I think, as AI takes over other aspects of life really. So what like when as you think about this, like what shifts in classrooms or schools do you think are really necessary in this moment? As we think about this new frontier, that young students are going to end up out in the middle of?
Dr John Spencer
I mean, I think there’s there we need to make the shifts in school at multiple levels, right? So the reality is we do have bloated curriculum apps and we have to simplify them, to move toward mastery. We do need to focus on deeper, fewer problems to solve. But also we need to rethink some of the structure of how we do school, whether it’s schedules, whether it’s, how we organize things. And so I would love to see a shift toward more deeper learning, a shift away from the excessive use of standardized tests, especially the way that we use them to judge and to sort and to determine, interventions or to determine if a teacher is good or not, like all of that. The policy attached to standardized tests, I think, needs to change in significant ways. But I do think there’s small things that we can do on a on a daily basis. And that’s one of the things I got into in my book, you know, within the depth advantage is, yeah, in the future our students will need to navigate a complicated world. Right. So the metaphor I give is we’ve gone from a corporate ladder to a maze. And so our students will need to navigate that maze with those competencies of deeper learning. And so they’re going to need communication. They’re going to need collaboration, problem solving self-direction resilience mastery that deeper focus and engagement. And that requires us to teach in a way that deliberately develops those skills. And and the beauty of it is we can do some of that in small ways, like tomorrow. You know what I mean? We can give small moments of student voice and choice. And I know it’s a lot of the work that you do, right? Like, we can provide, revisions to group work to build in more interdependence. Again, starting tomorrow, that develops deeper collaboration. And so I think one of the things I would say where I become really helpful is in working with teachers, seeing how small changes can yield those bigger, deeper learning results. And I think often it’s it’s a little tweaks that we make that end up making a huge difference.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I agree and it’s I think one of the areas where teachers have I’ve seen a lot of need for kind of support is post COVID. Whatever the combination between post COVID and just tiny devices, this reticence that kids have to talk to each other to engage in the messy work of collaboration and kind of problem solving, and how do we create structures in classrooms that kind of make discussion just like it’s baked in? It’s non-negotiable, right? Like so we talk about when I work with teachers about like, how can we use a reciprocal teaching structure? And maybe it’s for to your point about baby steps, it’s like onboarding them to each comprehension lens and slowly giving them chance to practice. And then over time, they have a shorter piece they’re working with. And that develops. And I just think it has to be this like commitment to how do we build these moments into classrooms. And even and especially for, I think, secondary teachers who are on that really quick seven period day still where you hear deep learning and it’s like, how do I do that? Like I do support schools all the time shifting to a block schedule. And I come in with like all this excitement. I’m like, think about all the cool things you can do. And there’s that fear of like, what am I going to do with the time? Yeah, because I can’t just stand up there and talk at kids the whole time. Like you can kind of get away with doing in a short period. And so yeah, some of the other bigger structural stuff I think, I wish more leaders were talking about.
Dr John Spencer
Yeah. And I mean, I think that those like I see a difference between whether or not deeper learning happens on the schools that have and don’t have like, schedules.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Dr John Spencer
And look at some of the schools with the block schedule. The teachers basically just teach to two lectures. Right? Two days. And they miss out on the opportunity. But you know what? A lot of them have adapted and they’ve changed their teaching, and they realize that they can’t just lecture for 90 minutes. Right?
Catlin Tucker
Yep.
Dr John Spencer
And and so it goes back to your point. Like it does require deeper systemic changes.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. Yeah, I know I was working at a school where I was talking about who’s like the when you shift to a block schedule, they’re two child like two possible challenges that I want you to avoid, which is the stacking, the stacking of just two direct instruction lessons, one on top of the other and a single block, or the stretch right where you’re just like, I’m going to take this one traditional lesson and just spend more time or give you more time to do the like, application practice and in classrooms. But to your point, I think teachers who are in it long enough, the stack approach is exhausting and kids hate it, and so they realize pretty quickly they can’t get away with it. And the stretching is not as energetic, or you’re not going to cover what you kind of need or you need to get kids into. So but I know I agree that we just need change so that teachers have some room to breathe, to consider creating space for this. You know, learning is messy, but we don’t let it be messy in a lot of classrooms.
Dr John Spencer
That’s so true.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. So you also wrote the AI roadmap human learning in the age of smart machines. As somebody who also has written about AI and curious like what for you just like sparked the decision like I need to write about this, I want to have a voice in this conversation around AI because that was what, 2023?
Dr John Spencer
Yeah, probably.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, that.
Dr John Spencer
Was something it was a while ago.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I feel so tell us about it.
Dr John Spencer
So the way it works with me with, with writing is there are times where I’ll write a book deliberately focused on a challenge. I see, and solutions. I’ve gathered. Right. So like, the depth advantage was like that. I was watching the challenge of distraction, a lack of focus, a lack of resilience with with the teachers in my cohort. Right. Just as a professor. And so that book came out of this to see need and then other books I write, it’s purely because I’m fascinated by the topic. So I wasn’t trying to solve a big issue with the book Vintage Innovation that I wrote. It was just, hey, what does it look like to overlap the old and the new and, the best practices and the next practices and like, how does that work and look like it? I just had fun playing around with it. And so I always have multiple books that I’m essentially working on writing that don’t necessarily have an audience. I have certain books like that right now. Like I have one book that’s just ADHD productivity, and it may someday be a book but may not like. We’ll see. Right. We’ll just we’ll see. Yeah. And so I got fascinated by AI back in maybe 2016, 2017. And I just started interviewing everyone I could and I was like, I’m going to start working on thinking about the meaning of generative AI, trying to understand it, communicate it. I didn’t blog about any of these topics because I thought like, this is going to be 2030 when we see these things. Like this would be like the book I write later on in life, right? Like or later. And then before ChatGPT came out. But when GPT three came out and I saw the use cases and I saw how how, how it would change things, I was like, I’m going to spend some, some more time writing that book. And then when ChatGPT came out, I was blogging about it, but I was also working on the book. And I worried it’s funny, like how how this stuff works. I worried that my book would be out too soon and, and I remember like when I released it, they were already like I don’t know how many there were, was six books out, like there were so many AI related education books that were already out. But I look back on that and I say, you know, it started as a passion project that I didn’t think would be useful. And then I really had to shift into, like, empathy with teachers.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Dr John Spencer
And, and then really being balanced about AI think a lot of in the beginning, there were a lot of people talking about AI that were very like they were AI evangelists. And, and I wasn’t going to be an AI evangelist. Right. And I don’t think you are either. Like, you’re much more nuanced. You’re much more nuanced, too. Like like.
Catlin Tucker
So.
Dr John Spencer
We’re in the same zone there. And and so I think, yeah, that was my process with the book and, and it was, it was one of the slowest books I’ve ever written because.
Catlin Tucker
I just really.
Dr John Spencer
Yeah, I tend to write. I tend to write quickly, like I, you know, and so.
Catlin Tucker
To me.
Dr John Spencer
Disadvantage. It was like, I think I knocked out the first draft in like 2 or 3 months or, you know, like super fast.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Dr John Spencer
My book was slow because I really wanted to make sure I understood what I was writing about.
Catlin Tucker
And Yeah.
Dr John Spencer
It was tough. Yeah.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I yeah, for sure, I feel very similar. I was listening to all the conversations around AI. There were the people who are just jumping out in our space, like hear all the tools. And from my perspective, I think the thing that I got excited about was I’ve been doing this work in the space of, you know, blended learning and student centered, student led learning. And the biggest barrier teachers face is I don’t have time to design this like this. Well, you’re asking me, Catlin is going to take so much time to do and like I don’t have, I can’t defer, I can’t do all this. And so the first book, you know, the book I wrote with Katie, I was like, hey, Katie, do you want to write this book with me? Was really about how do we help teachers harness AI so that we we’re not just spitting out, like using AI as a free teacher, as pay teacher for lesson kind of ideas, but like, use it to elevate the design experience and or elevate our design so that we can improve the learning experience for students and do things that would have taken just so long and so much cognitive effort to do prior to AI. And now I’ve kind of switched into my, again, the fear of like, I don’t want the focus to be tools like AI. They’re going to change. They’re going to develop. What are the skills that our kids need to use these tools responsibly, strategically. So, I think that’s are both of us coming to the space as not like tech, you know, being so excited about the tech, but more the pedagogical foundation and like what it can do for kids. And that’s probably why we both approach it that way.
Dr John Spencer
I would agree, I would agree.
Catlin Tucker
All right. Yeah. Because I’m such a like I just love the art of teaching so much. I mean, I love designing, learning. And I was really I, you and I both have talked a little bit. I’ve seen your stuff around feedback and recently saw a real where you were talking about using AI to support feedback, right? Giving feedback from a teacher perspective is super time consuming, but kids need feedback and a lot of it to grow, to hone skills, to get to develop their abilities. And so I kind of loved the way you framed feedback as like something that can support our AI is something that could support feedback, but also like, let’s teach students how to use it in a way that it’s not going to, like, rob them of the productive struggle. It’s not going to kind of take that cognitive work away from students. So I’d love for you to kind of just share that with the audience is like something to think about.
Dr John Spencer
Yeah. So I mean, one of the things that I think about with AI is the best thing is that we design it to do are going to have a shadow side, right? So like we were so worried about AI turning into like Blade Runner and Skynet and everything’s so we focus on making it pro-social. Well now one of the worst aspects of AI is it’s too agreeable.
Catlin Tucker
Oh my gosh.
Dr John Spencer
It’s like everything is awesome. It’s like a Lego movie right.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. It’s like I love this idea. Great. Great. You should totally do that.
Dr John Spencer
Like a.
Catlin Tucker
Lego. Movie. This thing. Oh.
Dr John Spencer
And so, like, I really think when it comes to feedback, it’s solved one of the biggest issues that we had, which was timely feedback. But then it, it solved it in such a way that it a is so positive and b so fast that we run the risk of kids not getting critical feedback that they need. But also not, not engaging in productive struggle. Yeah. And so I think there’s certain things that we can do we can use it like you talk about reciprocal teaching. We can use it as a reciprocal tool. We can use it to have things like telling the chat bot do not give me answers, but ask me questions until I get closer to my conceptual understanding. That’s a great example of productive struggle on the conceptual side, right? We can teach students how to, you know, do writing or whatever it may be, and then ask for very specific feedback. And we can still have the positivity bias that we need, right? We know as humans we need about 4 to 6 positive for every negative. But say I really need some critical feedback here as well. Right? And so being very intentional, being intentional about making sure that we go completely low tech and don’t even use tech at times. Yeah. And then times where we’re, we’re using it as the stop partner that’s going to challenge us and take it to a deeper level. And you know like I know of a lot of professors who have said oh I started using AI to grade student work and to give feedback. And my answer is always, why aren’t you having the students just cut you out as the middle man? And ask ask it themselves, right? Yep. And one of the things I think about there is the productive struggle comes from having a challenge, getting closer, failing, trying again, incrementally get getting closer. And so making sure that you’re not using it to give you answers too quickly, to give you feedback too quickly, and spacing it out. And so I’m not sure if I’m answering like I feel like I’ve all the questions you’ve asked, this has been, I’m meandering the most but I will add one more piece teaching kids how to ask questions of AI for feedback and making sure they know what good feedback looks like. It should be specific. It should align to our objectives. Yeah, it should be whatever that that means. So to training them on that, modeling it for them. And what I find is our receptivity to feedback varies based on our own agency. Right. So I have a little visual that I drew connected to this. But if you can imagine, whether you want feedback or don’t want feedback, let’s just say like receptivity to feedback. On one hand we have if it’s unexpected. And you didn’t ask for it. So like it’s it’s unexpected and it doesn’t come from you. It’s going to make you angry okay. If it’s unexpected or sorry if it’s expected but you didn’t ask for it. It’s going to make you anxious. If you asked for it and it’s expected, you’re not going to be angry or anxious. Typically with the critical feedback, you’re going to embrace it. You might even get excited about it. And it’s because of that sense of agency. I asked for it and I expected it. Yep. Right. And so that’s the beauty of when, when it’s done. Well students are actually going to be more likely to use that feedback because it the question came from them. They asked for specific feedback.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And I think that your your point around explicit teaching, around the questioning process in clarity, in communicating with AI systems is key. I also really encourage teachers what’s the reflective practice, the metacognitive skill building around this interaction, whether it’s an AI wrapper of like, okay, let’s generate your questions and what you need from AI. What aspects you’re getting feedback on before the AI and then after, what did you learn? What did you realize about your strategies, your strengths, your areas in need of development? Like I want them thinking intentionally about how I’m using these tools and what is the impact on me and on my work. So I love that. Okay, I know we’re so close to time. Oh, that’s a dovetail.
Dr John Spencer
I just want to say one thing. Like, I was working with a school and we were talking about how to use AI to study, and I said, you know, have seen submit their work and get trends of what they know and what they don’t know. And then based on what they don’t know how to create informational text for them to love that let them as clarifying questions and then have it test them right, which is a great recall and rehearsal process. But then one of the things I realized is, again, like this is rethinking it. After having students do that and watching them do that, I said, we need to add a step, do a teach part of what you know and what you don’t know. Have the right. Yeah. Have the AI come up with the trends and then you compare your perception of how you’re doing to the AI. Is perception. Where do you see a mismatch. And that small step is an example of just adding some productive struggle and some agency to this process of using AI as a study tool. Right.
Catlin Tucker
And the metacognitive piece because like I think about my strengths and I love that. Oh my gosh, thank you. Thank you John I feel like I want to I want a follow up episode with you. I you just keep picking your brain. Okay. So I always end in this can be lightning round because I know I have, like, one minute with you. What do you do with everything you’re balancing? Like family, work, writing, creating. How do you strive for, like, a healthy work life balance? What works for you? What tips do you have?
Dr John Spencer
I will say there are like, I love using templates that I can modify and reuse.
Catlin Tucker
Me too.
Dr John Spencer
I this is not the answer that you don’t necessarily love to hear, but like, I genuinely feel like leveraging ADHD is a superpower. So like, taking advantage of novelty and urgency as part of how I hit hyperfocus. My was, using what’s called the endowed progress effect. So doing it to do list, but starting with three things I’ve already done on my to do list creates a sense of progress. And that’s like a game changer, a small productivity thing. But then I also think, like at the teacher level, I learned years ago that starting with the question, what am I doing for students that they could be doing for themselves not only empowers my students, but it saves me time.
Catlin Tucker
I love that, though.
Dr John Spencer
Like I teach a very student centered approach even now at the university level. And I got to say, like, students are doing a lot of the work themselves and like that’s part of how you end up productive, you know?
Catlin Tucker
Oh yeah, when I, when I run workshops at the end, I’m like, who did the work today? It wasn’t me because I designed the day for you all to do the work. Right. So I love that advice. Thank you so much, John, for spending this time with me. It was an absolute pleasure to get to chat. I know there’s so much coming out of this that listeners will be thinking about and buzzing about, so thank you.
Dr John Spencer
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Catlin Tucker
Well, I feel like I could have talked to John for a whole nother hour about education and the way we teach and the system in which we teach, and how many of the changes we would love to see happening so that educators can really enjoy this work. They can foster that deep learning, giving students the time and space to deeply engage with concepts and ideas and skills. And there’s so much that’s out of educators control. But I did really love his suggestion about letting kind of starting to build habits with students and letting them kind of sit in spaces of productive struggle and helping them grow their stamina for that over time. Like, I love the reading example he shared of, we’re just going to read uninterrupted for 90 seconds, and then maybe two minutes and then maybe five minutes, and just growing that muscle of sitting and reading, and we can take that approach to all kinds of different things in education. If we really want students to start building the capacity to sit with tasks and stay focused. Because I do hear, like John, so often, educators feeling frustrated that, you know, students today don’t focus and they want everything immediately. And that might be true, right? Given the culture that they’re growing up in social media, just how easy it is to kind of, be entertained by endless reels and videos. But I do think we are preparing kids for a world where at times they are going to have to focus and they’re going to have to sit with challenging tasks. And so how do we build in this work in classrooms of kind of habit building and realizing, okay, if they can’t do very much yet, how do we start small? How do we build these routines over time? Ask students to sit with tasks for a little bit longer every week until they’re more comfortable focusing for longer periods of time? Because if we as educators think something is really valuable, it’s a it’s a skill. It’s a routine. It’s a habit we think is going to serve students. Then we have to be willing to dedicate time in class to cultivate those skills, even if it means starting really small. You know, we can think big. We can get excited. We have a year with our students. Typically, some of us, I guess, only have like a semester. But how are we going to dedicate time to building the habits that we think are going to serve students long after they’re out of our classrooms? So I want to thank you guys for joining me for this episode, this conversation. I will include a link to John’s website where you can join, his newsletter. He shares lots of really wonderful resources on it and also connect with him. If you’d like to follow up on anything, we discussed in this episode and if you have questions, comments, feedback for me, I always enjoy hearing from you guys. I’m very easy to find online. You can connect with me on Instagram at @CatlinTucker. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on X at @Catlin_Tucker. You can find me wherever you are comfortable connecting. Or you can always reach out via my website, CatlinTucker.com. And if you’re looking to join another newsletter every two weeks, I also reach out and share resources related to whatever I’m working on. So often there things I highlight here on The Balance, and if you’re looking for more of those kind of templates and guides and things like that, I share those as well with my newsletter group, so we’d love to have you if you have the bandwidth, if not, totally respect it. I get a lot of things flying at me in my email as well, and it can be a little overwhelming. So I hope you guys have an absolutely wonderful week and I will see you back here next Tuesday.
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