Podcast Episode
Episode Description
In this episode of The Balance, I talk with Shira Woolf Cohen, co-founder of Innovageous and author of Leading Future-Focused Schools: Engaging and Preparing Students for Career Success.
With nearly three decades in education and workforce development, Shira shares why the gap between what students learn in school and the skills needed in today’s workplace demands urgent attention. We explore what it means to cultivate a future-focused mindset, why every teacher is a “career teacher,” and how schools can embed career-connected learning across grade levels and subject areas.
Shira offers strategies for building on student strengths, examples of what this work looks like in practice, and actionable steps leaders can take to begin designing future-focused schools.
Connect with Shira Woolf Cohen and learn more about her work.
Leading Future-Focused Schools: Engaging and Preparing Students for Career Success
- http://innovageous.com
- https://www.instagram.com/innovageous/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/innovageous
- https://www.facebook.com/InnovageousSolutions/
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 Shira Wolfe Cohen, an educator, leader and advocate for innovative learning experiences that prepare students for their futures. She has nearly three decades of experience in education and workforce development. She has been a teacher, a program director, a dean, vice principal principal, and she is the co-founder of innovators. She is also the author of the book Leading Future Focused Schools Engaging and Preparing Students for Career Success. So very excited to have the opportunity to chat with her about her work and her book. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I am super excited to have this conversation. But before we dive in and we start talking about your book, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about your journey in education. Where did you begin? How did you find your way to the work you’re doing now around kind of career connected learning and future focused schools?
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah, well, I started my career when I was actually I like to tell people I started when I was 13, and I had my first job as a junior counselor in a pre camp camp, spelled with a K, because it was, pre-K kids. And in that space, I realized that I always wanted to do something with young people. I just didn’t know what it was. When I got into high school, and I know we’re going to talk more about this, I didn’t have the best experience, but it actually stamped that experience stamped my I need to go into education. And I decided to be a math teacher and go to school at Lesley College. It was Lesley College back then, and now it’s Lesley University and I became really involved in the school community and also started to think about all the jobs I had as a young person, whether that was babysitting, being a camp counselor, working in the weathervane, taking us back to that, the weathervane and.
Catlin Tucker
Oh.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. Remember, that’s where I work there in high school. Yeah. For the rain. And I started to think about, like, all the skills I had built and how I would bring that into my classroom. And so I did a lot of things like work in the Human Services department of the City of Cambridge to run an internship program. I came to the city of Philadelphia and worked in the city’s, Youth Work program over the summer, and really recognized that that was something that was interesting to me to help young people develop their futures and their careers. But I also really wanted to be a math teacher and so stepped into that classroom, spent five years in there sharpening my craft, as you know, middle school math. I then took a step out, started doing some more teaching, teaching some elective classes. And then I started running after school programs and decided that it was time for our school to have a youth internship and work program. So partnering with the city to get those foundational money to do that. And so in all that space, I really, really believed that every teacher needed to foster the strengths and passions of young people. And so as I became a principal and I worked with the CEO of the charter school I spent 19 years at to build out what the new programing and curriculum and expanded grades for high school could look like. We really focused on what it meant to make sure that every young person had a path. And so after I spent about ten years, serving as assistant principal and principal of the school, I decided that, you know, it was time to step out and do something new. I thought that something new was going to a new school. But what if it was in? It was 2020 March 2020, and so we could all imagine. Yep, that was 19 years of the school and March 2020 decided, you know, opportunity to go somewhere else and shortly realize that there’s a different education space. And so started in a business which is a combination of innovative and courageous. As one word, with my two partners, Joanna and Alicia. And in that work, we work to ensure that there is continuity and learning and inclusive opportunities for every young person, and that as part of that means helping to prepare them for their future. And so that journey from 13 to now helps me bring all the knowledge and interest in supporting young people and figuring out who they are, what they want to be, their passions and really at of just making sure that schools are embodying that and really fostering that for every student, not just for the students who are in a CTE program or the students who they know. We’re headed to college. But for everyone.
Catlin Tucker
I love that. And so when you were a middle school math teacher, were you already thinking about how do I make clear connections between what my middle school students are learning in math and the world outside the classroom? Because I think for me, somebody who did not thrive in math classrooms, I don’t I’m not particularly mathematically minded. That was the disconnect for me for so long as just like I’m learning something in this room that I literally have no idea how I would ever use in my life outside of this room. I mean, once we got past basic like arithmetic, I was just like, I don’t see the application or the relevance of this at all.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. So when I stepped into the classroom, I knew I had to bring it into the classroom. I just didn’t know how and when. I started teaching in 2001, when I graduated college, I actually didn’t go right into the classroom. I spent time running a boys and girls club programs, afterschool programs, being in an AmeriCorps program at a high school here in Philadelphia to sharpen my skills in relationship building and management of young people before I got to the content. Right. But when I stepped into the classroom, I was handed the most traditional textbook that basically was like, you know, practice questions that whole like, there’s 50 questions, do the odds, do the evens, let’s practice together. And there were some kids that got it, but there were more that didn’t. And so I started to bring in games and small projects and opportunities for young people to start teaching other people, because in my time as an AmeriCorps member, as a leader in AmeriCorps, I really learned about service and the impact of service. Yeah. And I gave students an opportunity to serve others. And for me, that was the entry point to serve others by helping them in class, to serve others, by creating board games for younger grades on topics that students had to reinforce. So for me, if I recognize that you had a topic you need to reinforce, and I was teaching seventh grade math, but you were still working on some third or fourth grade skills, and you just have you sit and practice over and over. We did some sort of project. We maybe created a board game. We created a set of posters, right, that were there to educate other people. And so I started to empower students to think about how their skills, whether are strengths or areas of growth, could be used to support others as well. And so it started to get some of my students who didn’t want to do 25 practice problems. I don’t blame them, know, to be like, but I would like to create a game for the third graders on long division, right? Or I want to be able to write. You know, one of my students said, like, I’m so bad at math, but I love writing. And I was like, well, let’s write a math, a book about this math topic, write a story that tells the story of this math problem. Right. And so I started to tap into that way, and it really what I saw was it just opened up young people to be more interested in taking risks, interested in bringing into their strengths, into areas that maybe they considered, like, I’m not good at this. And it just opened up a few opportunities for young people that they had not expected, and I had not expected. And for me, that was a starting point.
Catlin Tucker
I love that. So that that speaks to so many of the things that I definitely spend my time advocating for, which is just like kids are so capable, but they learn differently and they have different strengths and preferences. And if we can figure out how to remove those barriers and let them shine in a way that works for them, it can be so powerful for kids who haven’t classically felt maybe successful in a particular subject area. And I was coaching a math teacher last year, and we were talking about self pacing, and there was this real fear around, like, you know, have some kids who are so strong and they finish so quickly or they’re, they’re ready for a next level challenge. But I don’t just want to give them more work. And I was like, okay, well, what if we develop these like next level opportunities or these kind of like tasks for them that are creative in nature or we say the alternative depending on how you’re feeling today, is you can pick up a student math tutor lanyard and go work with one of your classmates and support them and be this kind of peer tutor for people who might be struggling a little bit more. Because sometimes just the way they explain things to each other, they get it. And we’ve explained it three times and they don’t get it, you know? And so I just love the idea of service and creativity and multiple pathways.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t, you know. Yeah. We all know that some people are not banks. We can’t just deposit information. And the more they can process the information, the more they can tie it to things that are their strengths. The more they can interact with others and see the impact of their work and the connection and relevancy. The more effort and agency they’re going to have in their learning. And it doesn’t have to be. What I ended up finding was I would come into my classroom and kids would be like waiting at the door to come in, right? Versus and they would be waiting at the door because they knew they had to get their folder, because I was going to give them time to continue working on their game or continue writing their story. Or in some cases, they were the person who was teaching the practice mini lesson at the beginning of my class.
Catlin Tucker
Oh my goodness, I love that so much. Okay, so you were kind enough to send me a copy of your book. It’s titled Leading Future Focused Schools Engaging and Preparing Students for Career Success. And I have been making my way through it and loving it. I was sharing before we started recording that I actually have my CTE credential. And so I’ve definitely and I’ve worked with lots of teachers with their CCT credentials and the idea of career pathways. But what you’re talking about in this book is so much more like this interweaving of this career focus into almost everything that we do, which I think is so fascinating. But you really start the book, you open it, describing this like growing gap between the skills that students are learning and developing in school and then the skills that they really need to thrive in a rapidly changing workplace. So can you kind of paint a picture of this gap for our listeners, and why this shift in our educational approach and instructional models and what we’re focusing on in classrooms is so urgent?
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. So you walk into a lot of classrooms in schools and what you first want to see, and most people are looking for is at our students doing what the teacher asks. And I’m not gonna lie, I look for that to when I am an outsider coming in for me. I look at a baseline of who’s engaged and who’s on task. But when we look further and we wonder why students are on or off task, a lot of times what we see is teachers as a stage, on a stage, right? And giving a long lecture. We might see very clear, structured opportunities for students to turn to the person next to them and talk about something, or to go to Four Corners, and we see students on computers, or maybe having a small activity or an independent worksheet or working, you know, in small groups with a teacher. What we don’t see on a consistent basis is young people grappling with content to persevere through something that they might not know with the appropriate scaffolds and supports from their teacher. We don’t necessarily see students being able to choose the way they want to approach an assignment, right? We don’t always see teachers who are creating a flexible work environment, classroom environment that encourage students to be adaptable and use creativity. And there are schools and classrooms where that is happening, but it’s definitely not the majority, right. And at the same time, we’re seeing data on student outcomes, whether that is literacy and math rates, whether that is attendance, whether there’s Gallup, has just put out some updated research on relevancy and of students see pathways and relationships with adults and it’s sort of a dismal. And so you think about that as the schooling, both the process that’s happening in classrooms and the outcomes that we’re seeing both in outcomes for students, but also their perspective. Right. A lot of the, you know, there are lots of surveys around engagement and relevancy that we’re asking young people for their thoughts, and they’re not answering in a way where they want to be in school, and they see the connections and they understand how this impacts their pathway in the future. And so that school. Right. In the workforce, what we’re seeing is this consistently changing needs. There’s technology that is out there that was not here 5 or 10 years ago or even last year. There is jobs that we would have never thought of many years ago. There are things that young people want to be that we can’t even imagine or stamp as something that could happen because we don’t know what’s to come. And so when you ask employers about what they think is important in their, you know, in the, in the future workforce, they’re not saying they need to have the technical skills for my job. What they’re saying is we need them to be able to approach a problem with creativity and flexibility. We need them to be able to when things don’t go right, to be able to manage their emotions and manage their approach, to be able to problem solve. For that, they are thinking about how young people are communicating and their communication skills, their ability to work with other people, their ability to manage their own time. And I don’t believe that our schools and again, not every school out there, but most schools are not preparing students for that type of world. Yeah, we give them clear directions. We expect them to follow it. We give them a clear outline of what their assignments should be, and we give them a rubric that shows exactly how we’re going to assess that one thing. We provide them content, we test them on it. We don’t. Certainly there are many schools not grading or assessing those what we call cross-sector skills, durable skills, 21st century skills, all the same thing. Right. And so there is this divide in what we are teaching and allowing students to experience in school and what our employers are looking for in the future workforce. So somehow we have to bridge that gap so that both educators and schools are helping to prepare young people for their future, whatever that may be, and that the ecosystem of professionals and industry partners are supporting educators and understanding what those needs are. Because there is no class in college that teaches teachers how to teach these types of skills. Maybe in the past five years, there’s been a resurgence of, like ACL courses, right? I’m teaching intro to ACL or things like that, but it’s not in the core content of what new teachers are teaching and learning, you know?
Catlin Tucker
And so often ACL like social emotional learning skills are taught almost like a there’s separate they’re an add on. They are not integrated into the fabric of a class where you have students consistently checking in with themselves, like practicing ways in which to self-regulate and understand how they’re feeling. Make responsible decisions like there are kids who sit in classrooms all day long. To your point, who the focus is compliance. They don’t actually get to make any meaningful choices about what they learn, or how they learn, or what they create to demonstrate their learning. And so, yeah, I one of the quotes and it was a little longer in the one of the first chapters was, I think from somebody’s interests industry talking about like, we need people who can wrestle with complex challenges and think creatively and like that is so important. And like, how often are kids actually mentally given the space, the time, the opportunity to wrestle with things? And I think a lot of teachers will say things like, oh, well, you know, learned helplessness or they’re not motivated or engaged. I’m like, they just don’t have any practice.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Oh my gosh, you’re so right. And it’s you’re I would say, and I think I mentioned this in the book, that middle school teachers the most will say they don’t know how to manage their emotions. They don’t know how to get things done. They don’t know how to follow directions. They don’t know how to work with other people. Almost with this like look around of like, who’s supposed to do this? Well, we’re supposed to do this. We have to do this as part of what we’re doing with our young people every day. And you make a really good point. I think that that’s the framework of how we integrate school successfully of both this combination of, yes, intentional research based curriculum and these every day to day actions is the same thing that we talk about and how we integrate careers. It can’t just be, I have an internship or you’re doing a job shadow, or I’m part of an after school school enterprise. It has to be that I’m doing this, and I see these connections in my classroom because my teachers are doing certain things to make sure that I know my strengths, and I need message, and I’m using academic language and all those things for sure.
Catlin Tucker
And you make the point in the book that, like, every teacher is a career teacher. So I would love for you to just unpack, explain that idea for listeners. And also obviously, like maybe we have a third grade teacher listening or we have like a sixth grade science teacher and they’re like, wait, but what does this look like? So any like little examples because I know you. The one thing I will tell everybody listening that’s so fabulous about the book is just the amount of specific strategies and examples that are so incredibly helpful and sometimes missing some from some books. So I would love for you to unpack that at your as career teacher. And then what could that look like in practice in subjects or, grade levels where teachers might be like, I don’t know how I would do this.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. So I think there’s, you know, there’s a few things, we what it means is that every what I mean by every career, every what I mean by every teacher is a career teacher is that it’s not one person’s responsibility to make sure that students know their strengths and their pathway and have a really good future. It is everyone’s responsibility. But in many schools, it’s the counselor or a career counselor, or an afterschool program specialist or an advisor in a future focused school, every educator sees their role in helping young people prepare for their future. And so when we think about teachers, because you’re right, I think, again, there’s no course on this. But when we think about teachers, I think, you know, there’s two things. One or these actions that you might show on the day to day basis, right? Everything from naming social, emotional and cross-sector or 21st century skills in the moment when you see young people doing something that will support their future, name it and say it right. We also want to make sure that there is just this every opportunity for young people to have leadership that can happen through a holding a job in a classroom, everything from I’m the timekeeper, you know, the traditional ones, to I’m the warm up, I’m the brain break person, I’m the Yogi, right? We’ve seen so many opportunities for young people to take leadership, and it doesn’t have to be. I’m showing leadership in math because it’s my math classroom, right? We can show leadership in other ways. In that math classroom, we can also have as a teachers, we can have visuals we have seen right when we put up, letters that young people are writing or newspaper articles, we can refer to them as reporters. Right. And we can have visuals in our classroom that remind young people of how they can make connections to their future. Some of the other things teachers might do is use that academic and professional language and behaviors in their classroom. And so I always use this example. But, you know, sometimes students come into your classroom not saying they have an excuse or it’s a valid excuse, but we the way we respond to them when they come in, will allow us to have a conversation that is more of a professional conversation. Then I’m like, why are you late? Right? And so these are some of the things that teachers can do on an everyday basis. The other thing teachers can do is teachers can make connections to careers in a way that is appropriate for their grade level. Right. And so in a younger grade, you might consider how do we role playing different jobs in a town? How do we not just listen to careers and have understand, you know, watch a video. But how do we then maybe think about what skills we have that could be connected to that career? How do we set up a mini marketplace or act out different careers and, like in a, you know, scenarios or drama or write out, you know, different captions to the pictures of careers saying what this person is and why they’re important to the community. So there are lots of smaller things that we can do. We can also as we get into the older grades, we can think about, them starting their own business. We can call them by their career names. One of the best things I heard was, a teacher calling her students analyst’s for the day.
Catlin Tucker
Ooh, I love that.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah, and I love it. Literally, like, blew me away. I was, like, just calling them these names and finding these small spaces. Nobody’s saying you have to stop what you’re doing and teach a specific curriculum. I do think there’s a space for that. Maybe that’s a space where the counselor teaches that or a career specialist. But these are the every day to day things that we do to make those connections. We don’t just teach about how, you know, how we design a garden. We also talk about who are the people that are helping us to diagnose gardens and doing the work. And so just on an everyday basis, making those connections helps students to see the relevancy in the future of, like, what’s possible and what they really liked working with area and perimeter. Maybe they also might really like being a landscape architect or like doing other things. And so if we don’t name them and expose young people to them and help them make those connections, they won’t ever see, so again, it’s not about stopping what we’re doing. It is about integrating the day to day actions that create this future focused classroom, and finding the times to make those connections to specific careers or young people as leaders, or as analysts or as researchers, whatever they are that day.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And there’s so much I love about that because I so my oldest child like loves science and she is just has this like weird sixth sense with animals. She’s like amazing with them. But I think one of the big challenges, as she’s kind of gotten to the place where she was applying to college and she used to give out majors. And I mean, I invited or I had a friend invite her to Chateau in, like a vet’s office, but that was the only thing that in her scope of experience was like science and animals and then she spent three days shadowing in a vet’s office and was like, I don’t like this. I don’t want to do this, but what else can I even do? If I love science and I care about animals and their ecosystems and their habitats and all the things. And I remember that experience, too, like graduating from high school, going to college, and being like, I only know the handful of careers for people I’ve interacted with, or that my parents were right. And so I can imagine. And now we’re in this world of AI where if I’m a teacher and I’m teaching something and I’m like, I don’t even know what careers this speaks to. Now I go to AI and I’m like, hey, I’m teaching this skill. Like, how do I frame this in a career context? Now I have language and insight that I might not have had before. AI to make those connections visible for students.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah, I love how you just said that, because when you said my daughter’s interested in, you know, animals in science, what do you think I did? I went to ChatGPT and I wrote provide me with a list of careers in animals in science. Right. Because as teachers don’t have the knowledge of all the careers that are out there, I mean, I, I don’t know that, but no.
Catlin Tucker
Me neither.
Shira Woolf Cohen
This two seconds. Right. In two seconds. I wrote that one question and I got categories things with animal care and health. Yes. Around vets and being a vet technician and working in animal shelter, wildlife rehab. But there’s also research around being an animal scientist or a zoologist or a behavior scientist for animals, right? Or being a animal trainer or even a science teacher focused on animals. Right. There’s so much that you can do and we as educators don’t know. And so there is a really interesting space for us to say, how do we use AI tools to help us deepen our knowledge of the workforce development system, and what programs and majors and careers are out there? But also then, like you said, help to brainstorm some creative ways to expose students to those careers.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, and even some of the examples, like I remember in and I don’t remember why I decided to do this, I was just like, writing a business letter is a skill. I want my students to have it. It’s not in my standards. And we ended up writing business letters to, I want to say, like a government person about an issue we had been researching and I did this, video just for my students of, like, how to write a business letter and I want to say on YouTube, that video has like 150,000 views, more like more than any other writing video I’ve ever done. And I think it really speaks to this like craving for some of that, you know, even just support with what are some of the skills that I’ll need to apply for a job or be in a job. And like as an English teacher, I can see really clear overlaps of ways to pull in some of that. And what I loved were some of the other examples you gave to where I was just like, oh, we’re working on this in the subject area. And we could do it through this lens. And that’s actually a really great skill to cultivate for students when we think about a future career, you know, setting and skill set that they need. And so I think that, that, that teacher level, it’s so exciting to kind of think about how to do that, just to create more interest and relevance for students. But you also talk about, you know, the importance of kind of cultivating a future focused mindset and like the role that leadership really can play or should play in that. And so what does it look like in practice for leaders who are like, I see the value. I really want to move my campus in this direction. How do they kind of build and develop and cultivate this mindset?
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. So there are four components that for leaders, I want to name. The first one is going to be around establishing a future focused identity, because future focus leaders are going to create the space where there is a shared vision. There’s alignment, right, that every, person knows about because it is really clear. And and that is something that is a first part. It’s like we have to establish as the leaders the future focused identity. I’m not saying do it in a behind your desk by yourself. Right. But we have to establish it and we have to name it. We also have to make sure that there are some supportive structures in place. I think this is one of the like gaps that I see a lot of times in my work with leaders is we say like we’re going to do this thing, but what we’re not doing is providing the systems, the supports, the accountability, the structures for our teachers to do it. So the second part is that that future focus leaders create the systems, the time, the resources that teachers need to create and embody that future focus mindset from that like aspiration into their daily practice of what’s happening every day. We can’t just expect that we’re going to name, hey, we want you to have a future focused mindset. Here’s what I mean by that and that teachers are going to go do it. We have to make sure we’re giving them the resources, the support, but also the accountability when we say it’s going to happen. And we’ve given the support and the resources to make sure it’s happening. The third one is educators, as leaders. I don’t know another way to say that it’s that like future focus leaders, like they engage and they equip educators to be part of their team to serve as teacher leaders, to service grade level, rep level representatives, to lead PD, to share what’s happening, to open up their classroom, to build that momentum. Back to the third part. And then the fourth part is engaging that family and community because future focused leaders, they’re always building powerful partnerships. They’re making sure their ecosystem is really strong so that families and community members can be part of their school. And so when leaders are really doing those four things, then they can create the system of a future focused school. That is not just them saying they want to do something, but is really embodying that with the, communication, the systems, the support, the accountability, the inspiration and empowerment and the engagement of families and communities.
Catlin Tucker
I love that, so that’s what we want.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah.
Catlin Tucker
You feel like are the the mindsets or just the barriers that.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Schools.
Catlin Tucker
Back or leadership back from making this kind of a shift? Heavy question.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah, that is every question. So, I mean, I think the purpose of education in our country has not necessarily been the right way. And so I think when we look as like a very macro level, right before we get into the individual thing on a macro level, the purpose of education has really felt more like childcare and ensuring students have reading, math and math skills. Right? Like these to bake big things. The purpose of education has not necessarily been to prepare every student for being productive, contributing citizens in our society. And that’s the gap. And what we’re seeing as a result of that is economic mobility from generation to generation is actually not getting stronger, as we would hope for our young people. And so I think on a macro level, this mindset of like the purpose of school, I also think there is this mindset that young people should do as we said. And if I tell you to do the ad practice numbers, you should do them. And even if you did the event and you did the 25 even ones, if you didn’t do the ad one, you still get a zero, right? I also think that teachers I hear this all the time on a teacher level, which is I teach math, I teach science, not, I teach young people and I teach students. And my content is math, right? Because when we teach math, our priority is teaching math, whether the young people get it or not. When we teach students, our priority is that our students are growing and learning, hopefully in the content and everything else that they’re responsible.
Catlin Tucker
And so I love that.
Shira Woolf Cohen
I’m going to say the other mindset, which you alluded to a little bit, which is this, well, we teachers can are not holding and schools are not holding students to high expectations for everyone. When we see they can’t meet the expectations, we don’t allow them to grapple or should demonstrate, grant and persevere. We lower the expectation or we find another pathway to graduation, or we give them an opportunity to make it up in a totally different way. And so lowering those expectations is a mindset that our schools and our teachers and our leaders embody that allows them to just lower the bar, which is not preparing them for those things that we talked about around adaptability and flexibility and managing time and emotions, communication, that our our workforce, the saying we need to have and we need to see in our future generations of, you know, employees.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I know, I think I really do think larger conversations and grappling with what is the purpose of us all being in this space together is something that definitely needs to happen. And I really you one of the things as I was reading the book that I loved as well, was your emphasis on kind of the role of a strengths based approach to instruction, right? Where, you know, we’re really building on the the assets and the qualities and the strengths students are bringing into the classroom, because none of us is good at everything, period. And so how are we celebrating and supporting students where they’re where they are in our classes? And, and really approaching instruction from that more strength based approach?
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. You’re right. We’re not all go to everything. So I was a middle school math teacher, and you can only imagine how many students and families would come in and say, like, they’re not good at math and everyone is good at math, right? We just have to get to a point where you find systems that so that you understand and processes you can understand, you understand the relevance. Maybe you even have the tools, right? Like I work with some teachers who will be like, we’re working on word problems, but this this young person doesn’t have their math. That’s right. They’re great at the Ela, but they don’t have their math backs. And this is a great example of strength based and sounds like okay, but you just said they’re great at literacy. So where can we start. Pull out some of their strengths in support of them getting to the numbers skills. What do they know about this word problem. What can they tell us. Right. And and maybe we even give them a calculator to do some of the number facts because they’re in ninth grade. And like if we go back to number facts, they’re never going to move on. But we give them the tools because there are calculators all over the place to be able to persevere through so that they feel a little bit of a win to feel like they can go back and tackle this. Right. And so when we look at young people’s strengths, we can help them build their self-awareness. And so some of the things I think about is, I used to have students, like, share what they thought some of their biggest strengths in math were. And if they were like, I’m not a math person, let them tell me why. And then we would go back to that was a journal entry, and we go back to it and we’d sit down and talk about their growth and was there like any times where they thought maybe they got a little bit better at this, or would they change their opinion? Right. So building their self-awareness. Also, as a new teacher, I did interest inventories for my students so that I could know what their interests were so that we could make those connections. Right. So, I was definitely that teacher that, like, took my student who I needed to see during lunch and was not, you know, following my rules and all the things, but being interrupted, like interrupting. I took him because I knew he was a basketball player to the gym. And we I’m a terrible basketball player, but we shot hoops while we did some of the math work. Right. And so that’s because I knew he really loved basketball. Right. Same thing with streaming video games. Right. So how do we tap into those interests? And so allowing students to tell us their interests and then us making those small connections, even as we’re writing, word problems or questions for a test, how do we just add in some of their interest to, like, pique that just a tiny bit?
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. Yeah. And I’m even thinking about too, because I have had this conversation with teachers around another use of AI, which is what’s great is if you’re in a school where kids are allowed to utilize, you know, school AI or some other like online space where they can interact with an AI, then they can also like kind of use lenses of interest to try to practice things and understand things that are hard for them. So if there’s like, here’s a mathematical process, can you explain it to me through the lens of this other thing that I like, that I enjoy, that I’m interested in now? We also, like, don’t have to be the educator that, like, thinks up all the things that are going to appeal to the different interest in our class. It’s like we can actually position students to be able to do them that for themselves at times.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yes. We do not have to. We’re never going to have all the answers. And I think if teachers are, this mindset that I should know everything about what I’m teaching in my classroom, that might be a mindset we need to shift because we don’t know everything and we certainly can’t. I don’t know enough about baseball or basketball to help explain the math. You know, content skill through that lens. But you’re right. I might be able to help me do that. But I think also as teachers, we can do some things that are simple. Once we know students interest and what they think they’re good at, we can give them some choices, right? It’s not hard to say. Here are the three ways that you can respond to this assignment. We can have them recognize each other. We can have them, do some things that are like student led discussions. Going back to that leadership, if I have a young person who I know loves to talk, and let’s plan out how you’re going to talk in our class because you’re going to lead the discussion. Right? I love, and so I think some of these things are strategies that teachers can use to just find out what strikes or students have from their own opinion, foster those strengths and celebrate those strengths. As we’re going through our content. And it doesn’t have to be the strength, doesn’t have to be directly related to your content. It can be, you know, kind of adjacent to it that impacts your.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And our content, it is we teach in silos, but that’s not how life is. So there are all these wonderful opportunities to blend skills from the humanities into the math and sciences and into the arts and the languages. Like, there’s so much cool stuff we can do if we to your point, stop thinking like, hey, I’m just an English teacher, or I’m just a science teacher or a math teacher. It’s like, yeah, but there’s a whole kaleidoscope of skills and ways in which other subject areas and focus is, focus areas kind of bleed into what we do and like, merge with it. And I think in really exciting ways. And the more I hear you talk, so I am reflected, you share a really powerful reflection of your own experience with a student. And the more I was reading the book and even this conversation, I’m like, I can see how much this is showing up in your own kind of mission and your values and like, what’s driving your work. And you ask this question of like, why are my skills and my talents and strengths not recognized in school when they were being recognized in other areas of your life? So I would love for you to just share a little bit of that story with listeners and kind of how it shaped the way you think about education and this work that you’re doing.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. So I people don’t believe me. I literally slept through high school classes. I was this student that flew right under the radar. I wasn’t failing, I didn’t call disruption. But there were classes every day that I went in and they were, you know, hour long classes. And I would walk into the class and I would put my head down like I was looking at my book, and I would go to sleep. And 45 minutes later, the bell would ring. I’d get up and I’d leave. Nobody ask me questions. Nobody asked me to do anything. I was not asked to do anything. I wasn’t even asked to do anything. And so, that was my experience in high school, and I literally I was a straight C student. I applied to one college and I applied to that college after a lot of debate with my mom, with my guidance counselor, around whether or not I was going to go to college and I knew I was going to college. And that was my school experience. But I was a really active member of my synagogue’s youth group with my community center, with my summer camp. And in those places I was seen as a leader. My voice was heard. Great relationships with adults had opportunities to take on roles and try new things. I was able to give back to the community and I was just these two totally different people. I’m sure that what got me into college was the fact that I was this other person. Right? Because I had all these things on my resumé and on my application that had nothing to do with school because I really I hated school. I was never part in an afterschool program. I played sports for one season my freshman year and hated it. And so I was based very to like, I literally was part of zero afterschool programs at my high school, which is crazy to me, or any leadership opportunities or extracurricular. Zero. Right. But in this other space, I was very active. And so there was this gap there that I somehow had to bring together. And so when I asked myself that question around, like, why are my talents and skills and, you know, strengths seen in one space but not the other? I really think it was about what the adults valued. And adults valued students who didn’t disrupt. And they valued students who got A’s right. And I was yeah, I didn’t disrupt anything. But I also certainly didn’t contribute. And I certainly wasn’t getting good grades. And so in the other space they weren’t worried about my grades. They were worried about who I was as a person. And were they fostering someone who’s going to be an active citizen? And did I know what my future was going to be like and who I wasn’t as a person? Right. And those two things were very separate. And so there is a space of bringing both those spaces together and maybe, just maybe, if there were teachers in my high school who would have asked me questions, asked me why I slept through class, even acknowledge I don’t remember a teacher saying to me, I see you sleeping for class and RA that’s. And so yeah, I mean, it’s literally crazy. And I just wonder what would have happened if those teachers would have seen me as a person and as a leader and as a contributor to the community, not just as someone who should be learning math or science or English.
Catlin Tucker
Well, and what I love about this is you think about how many students we lose because the way school is structured doesn’t it doesn’t work for them. My son is like that. Like he’s smart, he gets A’s and B’s because that’s like, that’s how he has social life, you know? But like he does not enjoy the experience. And I think because he’s very charismatic and he’s very extroverted and you know, he would love to do projects with people and have those conversations and a lot of that isn’t fostered. And many of his classes, and I wonder if we had more of a, you know, future focused career focus where we’re really starting to celebrate and invite, a lot of different skills, not just the content specific skills, but leadership, communication, problem solving, like how many more students would feel seen and feel like, yeah, you know, math is it’s it’s tough for me. But in my math class, I get to do all these other things that, you know what I actually feel like I’m really good at? I just wonder how many more students we would be kind of keeping in that net of engagement and motivated to come to school in an era where, like so many kids are just staying home.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Totally. Every opportunity to make connections, to allow students to be seen for us to not just recognize and celebrate the content, but recognize who these young people are and learners. And as you know, people who are growing into what we hope will be this future generation of amazing citizens who meant great things. But if we continue to do this, come to class, pay attention, do this thing, stay on task, and we don’t do a little bit of the messy work, which is, I think, what a lot of times like makes teachers feel like they don’t want to do this. It’s because it doesn’t feel like a straight line. It doesn’t feel like there’s a clear outcome. It doesn’t feel like I say this and students do this, but it could be a little bit more roundabout and it could feel a little bit more like I’m a facilitator and it could be a little bit more like, I don’t know, all the answers and that would be okay. And how do we get teachers to that space is there’s going to be some hard work of, the level of, you know, post-secondary and training teachers, but also, schools and leaders to do the work to make it, to give permission to do that. Because that is a huge like barrier for teachers, is they think that I’m supposed to operate in this box and I can’t go out of it. And sometimes as leaders, we need to give them the permission to step outside that box in an effort of developing really strong, young people who know what they want to do and be as they grow up.
Catlin Tucker
Well, and I would say get comfortable with the messy because actually learning is super messy. It’s not this tidy little like, we do this and you practice this and we move on to the next thing. The way we present it is actually not how learning works at all. And so yeah, let’s get them comfortable with all the messy and and yeah, give them permission to like not have all the answers and not have to be like, you know, moving at this like this rapid clip where nobody feels like they can even take a second to like, do anything other than teach the lesson that’s in front of them, in the way it’s been written. It’s, it’s such a challenging moment in education.
Shira Woolf Cohen
If we did all these other things, it also we would if we focus on all these other things, then it would be more natural that students will be able to understand and comprehend, do better with the content because we focus on all the things that will allow them to approach it.
Catlin Tucker
Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, I feel like we could talk for another hour.
Shira Woolf Cohen
We could.
Catlin Tucker
But I want to respect your time. I always end the podcast by inviting my guests to share a tip, a strategy. It could be a mindset, a routine, something that just like, helps you strive for some semblance of balance in your life. Since we’re all juggling so much, whether it’s families and careers and whatever, so is there something that works for you?
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. So during Covid, I started, walking and listening to podcasts. So I’ve just I’ve had the pleasure of listening to many of your podcasts, especially, as I was trying to figure out how to transfer my own school to a virtual space. And so I think one of the things I do for balance is I find things that I like to watch or listen to, and I try to do something active while I’m doing that. And so am I doing two things at once. My husband always laughs because I in the background of my work on a daily basis, there are medical dramas and EMT dramas, and maybe that’s from my many years in a school always having so much happening. But for me, doing both of those things of moving and watching or listening allows me to occupy my whole brain. If I’m just walking, I’m still thinking about work. If I’m just watching, I get, you know, I get distracted. So those two things help to bring me balance and really just occupy my whole body, mind and body.
Catlin Tucker
My gosh, I am very much, active paired with the podcast kind of person to whether I’m walking my dog or I’m on the stair climber at the gym. Yeah. So that’s a great, great tip. Well, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. For the book, I will link to the book in the show notes for anybody who’s excited to check it out. But just really appreciate the perspective.
Shira Woolf Cohen
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. I, listen to so many of your podcasts, and it’s exciting to be on and just share more about the strategies and the book. And so thank you. Absolutely.
Catlin Tucker
I love this idea of focusing on future ready, career ready skills, future ready kind of learning, getting kids excited about the connections between what they’re doing in the classroom, what they’re learning, and potential careers beyond the classroom.
I think about how many students don’t really see the relevance of what they’re learning in a classroom. And if we as educators can start to make the connections between the skills they’re developing, the roles they’re taking on, the content they’re learning, and specific career pathways beyond school, how many more students might we be able to kind of keep interested, help them see why this is important, what they’re learning, and, kind of the skills that they’re honing. And I like also that we teach in this time where we don’t have to be the expert on every career, we can lean on AI to say, hey, this is what I’m teaching, and how do I make a career connection for my students? Or how what roles might my students take to kind of explore something or hone specific skills? Right. I loved the comment of we’re not just teachers of a particular content. We are teachers of the whole person, the whole child. And how are we thinking about setting them up for success long after they leave our classrooms with skills that are going to allow them to be resilient and flexible as they approach really complex kind of nuanced problems, unfamiliar challenges that they will inevitably face once they are out in the world. So such a great conversation.
I highly recommend the book if you have any questions, any comments, any feedback, I will link to kind of shear as contact information in the show notes, as well as to the book you can always find me online. I’m at Catlin Underscore Tucker on X, I am at Catlin Tucker on Instagram. Or you can always find me on my website catlintucker.com where you can read blogs, post questions and comments there. And as always, I want to thank you guys so much for joining me for this conversation. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
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