Curriculum Associates presents The Extraordinary Educators Podcast with hosts Danielle Sullivan and Sari Laberis. Hear tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning.
Danielle Sullivan:We're here for you. Hi everyone, Welcome to the Extraordinary Educator podcast. I'm Danielle.
Sari Laberis:And I'm Sari. This week we are joined by Extraordinary Educator, fourth-grade math and science teacher, Andrea Baney.
Danielle Sullivan:And I love the way that we talked about productive struggle with Andrea. She just makes it sound so easy to implement and especially the way she ends the podcast. Make sure you listen the whole 10 minutes, the whole 10 minutes to hear. That's something that I actually talked to a lot of educators about now about what skills should we be teaching students in the world of AI.
Sari Laberis:Yes, enjoy our conversation with Andrea. Welcome, Andrea, we are so excited to have you back on the podcast.
Andrea Baney:Thank you very much. It's good to be here so.
Danielle Sullivan:Andrea, what's been going on in your world? Tell us a little bit about how are things going and what's top of mind lately.
Andrea Baney:Sure. So I actually just returned to school after a maternity leave, so I was out the entire first part of the school year and I returned on February 1st, so I jumped right back into my fourth grade classroom. It was unique, though, because I had a room full of kiddos who were brand new to me, but they all knew each other, and it took a lot of me getting to know them and establishing routines more than halfway through the school years. It was very, very unique, but we're getting into the rhythm of things and getting to know each other and I feel like I've been here the whole time. So new beginnings that are not quite so new, yeah, and congratulations on your growing family.
Sari Laberis:We're so excited for you. Thank you, Of course. So you recently wrote a blog and we will link it in the show notes for our listeners and an incredible, really insightful blog about productive struggle. So just to dive right in in your own words, what is productive struggle?
Andrea Baney:We all struggle in life and I think that it's unfortunately something that just happens and we have to learn over time how to deal with it. So productive struggle is something that I have my students deal with in the classroom in different ways, but it's most of the time when we've never done something before and asking them to do a task that I know will stump them, but watching them navigate through that process and get some positives out of that experience. So learning that things aren't always going to be right at our fingertips and working our way through it to learn through that process.
Danielle Sullivan:So can that me editing this? Okay, that sounds amazing. What are some concrete examples of how you are supporting your students with productive struggle?
Andrea Baney:So I like to do something with productive struggle, usually at the beginning of any new concept. So I am a math and science teacher, so recently we started talking about heat energy in our science classrooms and we talked about different forms of heat. We talked about different forms of heat but before we had that discussion I had my students think about what came to mind in that area.
Andrea Baney:But I told them you can't think about the sunshine or fire like usually the most common things, and they had to think about what could produce heat other than those two items. Do it individually, by themselves, and then talk with a partner. And at first they were really stumped, but then they could, like talk together, come up with ideas, and then they were really excited to share that idea as a whole group. We then dove into the actual discussion and we talked about convection and conduction and just different forms of energy, heat transfer, and now they're experts that they could just ramble on forever. But in the beginning you know they look at you kind of like with a blank stare, like a little bit of panic, like oh gosh, I don't know what we're talking about, or mrs Bainey's really stumped me. But they find different ways to navigate that struggle and then come up with solutions.
Sari Laberis:Let's talk about that for a second, and thank you for sharing those examples. I feel like, especially now, as a parent, but also as a former teacher, when you see that look the, I'm confused, right, our instinct, especially as teachers and caregivers, is to jump in, swoop in and help, right, like we don't want this to be hard right, but that's actually not what's best for our students. And so I'm curious, like in your own experience, in your own journey with this, what is your kind of like internal monologue and how do you reconcile with that in encouraging them to quote struggle? And then also, how have you taught them to kind of help themselves?
Andrea Baney:Yeah, it's definitely a fine line, because you don't want a student to be given a task and just instantly, like, melt down or get frustrated to the point where they shut down completely. So at the very beginning of doing this, I kind of model it or set it up so that that failure won't happen. So one of the first things that I did with my students that I talked about in the blog was that they created a circuit and I only gave them three items, so I kept it very basic. So they had a wire, a light bulb and a battery, and we talked about, you know, these three things can light a light, and but I'm not going to tell you how to do that. And I said I forefronted it by saying you're going to try it and you're most likely not going to get that light bulb to light up.
Andrea Baney:So when this happens, I don't want you to give up. I want you to know that it's possible and keep trying. And even if you keep trying and keep trying and it doesn't work, it's okay, we're going to talk about it, we'll find that solution together. But I want you to explore it on your own to see if you can figure it out. And so by setting up those explanations ahead of time it helps kiddos know that it's okay if I fail Mrs Bainey's kind of expecting that to happen and we're gonna move forward from here. So letting them know that really helps my students go through that process as we navigate it together.
Danielle Sullivan:Yeah, I think we should just repeat that for adults. I think those are just good learning steps. So we're about to run out of time, but before we do, I really want to make sure. I'm encouraging that because you make it sound so easy and so natural. So what are? Maybe some resources that you've read or watched, or just what got you thinking about all of this?
Andrea Baney:A few years ago I was at a professional development.
Andrea Baney:I can't even tell you what it was for, but they were talking about technology and just how everything is at our fingertips and our job is to prepare our students for the future.
Andrea Baney:Well, if everyone can ask Siri or ask Google or ask whoever whatever AI technology for the answer, what's going to set our students apart? And I think that really resonated with me. I was like, what can I do to prepare my kiddos for the future to really like think outside the box and to make them just good people, good human beings? And I thought about interactions, peer-to-peer interactions, how to get along with people, how to react if something goes wrong or in an unexpected manner that we weren't prepared for. And right now that's something technology can't do for us. So those ideas of what we can develop those young human beings into really can all be taught, be learned, be experienced through productive struggle. So if they're given those scenarios, it's going to help shape them into a model citizen that can get along with people, talk through problems, navigate internal things that are happening and just work their way through them.
Sari Laberis:And that's what I'm trying to do. That is amazing and that was such a mic drop insightful moment. We're just going to end it here, Andrea, Thank you. Thank you so much for all you do for your students and for providing some insight and tips and strategies into how other educators can implement this in their classroom. We appreciate you, Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode with Andrea. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. A quick note before we close out this is Danielle Sullivan's last episode with us. It is so bittersweet, Danielle. You have provided such incredible and valuable insights, expertise, tips, strategies and joy to our listeners.
Danielle Sullivan:Thank you so much for being on this journey with us, thank you, and I have loved every minute of it. Yes, it is bittersweet, but I know this podcast will continue on and we'll continue to share educator stories. So thank you, listeners, for being with us for five seasons. We appreciate you and until we meet again, be you be true, be extraordinary.
Sari Laberis:Thank you so much, Danielle. I wish you the very best in your next chapter.
Sari Laberis:Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter at Curriculum Associ and on Instagram, at my Eye Ready. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducatorsatcainccom. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you, join the conversation. Please leave a review.
Danielle Sullivan:And remember, be you be true, be extraordinary.
Andrea Baney:The Extraordinary.
Danielle Sullivan:Educators Podcast is produced by Curriculum Media by Atsi Hannon, guest booking by Sari Labaris, production by Haley Browning. This podcast is copyright, material and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.