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Once again, Yuni Santosa made my day by interpreting and applying my work into hers. This is the magic of engaging with other educators. We are all in this together. #thinkchat2020 
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by Lu Gerlach
 by Lu Gerlach You can make these simple changes to bring about agency within your classroom: structure, relationships, collaboration, resources, and environment.  Let’s zoom into each of these components to help our practice. Structure...is how time is being used during the day. Who decides how much time is spent on different activities and parts of the unit of inquiry? Time is the greatest factor in developing new ideas. When we rush the time to get through the content, we miss key opportunities to have “Aha” moments. Relationships...create new opportunities for growth. Who decides which relationships will develop? The right pairing can build up strengths and support areas of growth. More importantly, building relationships allows students to demonstrate leadership qualities and agency. Collaboration...brings about new ideas. When working together, who is doing the talking? Is it the strongest voices or is there a balance? Collaboration has the potential to generate novel ideas through the power of the group, but this can only happen if everyone is valued equally. Resources...cement understanding of ideas. What resources are being used and who decides how to use them? When students self-select resources to guide their learning, there is a greater chance of transfer to new learning situations. Allowing students to use a wider range of resources provides a greater chance of success. Environment...reflect the values of the group. Who decides how the class will be designed and what types of seating is used? When learners co-design the learning space, they feel more a part of the learning experience. It reflects their unique learning style and how they learn best.
When we release some of the control of the learning environment, magical things begin to happen. Our students know how they learn best. When we listen to their suggestions, they become more connected to the learning experience and are driven to create. Isn’t this what we all want as teachers? The greater question, are you willing to give up some of the control to achieve it? When I was a teacher, I went through a metamorphosis with student agency. In truth, I controlled most of the inquiry and structure of the classroom experiences while I was developing my understanding of the PYP. After 5-6 years of experience, I was able to release some of the control of classroom design and materials used in experiments. As time went by, I was finding myself conferring with my students regularly on projects and how to show their understanding of the big ideas in the unit of inquiry. Most of the time, my students came up with better ideas than I could have ever imagined by myself. Did agency come naturally? Absolutely not. Like everything else, it took a lot of practice, trust in the process, and faith in my students. In the end, you will see a transformative change not only in your students, but the entire school community. You just need to trust the process that it will work out. Take it a little at a time and be kind to yourself. This is not a race, but one step at a time. by Lu Gerlach The UN created 17 sustainable development goals as a blueprint for creating self-reliant systems by 2030. These goals can be used in learning to identify underlying factors for so many social, economic, and political issues being faced in the world. The SDGs can be found here. UN Sustainable Development GoalsOver the past two years, I’ve heard a lot about agency. We did it inherently, but there was no label to define it. As you read about agency, most blogs and articles will break apart the three components (voice, choice, and ownership) apart, rather than find a way to use them together. In this episode, we are going to attempt to bring them together while trying to research deeper using the UN Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. Our task is to use the SDGs to bring about more agency and depth of understanding when researching. VoiceConsider a topic that you are studying in social studies and science that your students want to explore deeper. Allow your students to brainstorm and choose their topics. In this instance, GROUP A has decided to explore the impact that location has on access to natural resources. ChoiceAllow students to choose an SDG to be their lens in researching their topic deeper. Expanding upon our topic, GROUP A will explore the impact of location on access to natural resources through the lens of zero poverty. OwnershipThe students will have ownership of the learning process and product. They will receive instruction and modeling on various methods and will self-select from a given process and product. GROUP A has decided to explore the top three countries that have the lowest poverty rate: Turkmenistan (1), Taiwan (2), and Kazakhstan (3) compared to the United States (45) according to the CIA World Factbook as of January 1, 2019. The guiding questions for this research will include: Natural Resources What natural resources are available? How are resources being conserved and reused? What happens to all the waste? Poverty How is poverty defined in these countries? How have these countries kept the poverty rate so low? Why is the US poverty rate so high? Natural Resources and Poverty How has access to resources created poverty? How can natural resources be accessed equitably? How might poverty determine opportunities? Process and product: Write a letter or email to an expert and ask their questions. Possible experts may include: Professor Angus Deaton, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in Economics in 2015 At this time, you make yourself think that I’m crazy or too ambitious. This is how the innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow think and solve their problems. They research their topic, ask questions, and consult experts. You can’t get a better answer than from a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Dream big! There is a high probability that GROUP A will not receive a response to their letter. More important than receiving the answer is asking the question. This is what it means when we say, it’s the process not the product that matters most. I know that we went from zero to 60 in a few minutes, but this is what agency looks like. It’s dynamic, rich, research worthy, and requires a depth of thought. Your students deserve this opportunity to study their passion at this level. Will you have courage to let them? by Lu Gerlach When I think of ownership, I think of this podcast. At the beginning of this pandemic, I felt such an urgency to create content that would help other educators who were struggling with virtual teaching. Although we are PYP practitioners, teaching virtually feels like we’ve re-entered teacher’s college all over again. To be honest, I didn’t know where to start, but I knew I wanted to help. I began by making posters, writing some descriptions, voice recording my observations ideas, making video clips, and posting across social media. What I discovered is that I really enjoyed sharing my unique voice with the world. Like most educators, I felt that if I made one teacher’s life easier, it was all worth it. I still do. To me, this is ownership. I had to figure out my own path in this weird new world of podcasting. I had to make a plan, find unique ideas to share, and give my own voice to the project. I own the many mistakes I’ve made along the way and the successes too. This is how we learn best. We learn by making plans, executing them, tweaking what doesn’t work, and reflecting on the process. This is so important for our students to experience, because it’s at the heart of education. Can you imagine how amazing school would be if every student was valued based on their ownership of the process, rather than, their standardized test score? In confession #9, we explored different ways to engage our students into their thinking. This is ownership in hiding. I wanted you to experience ownership on a basic level and now, we are going to explore the stages deeper by evaluating the Ownership Continuum. Ownership is very abstract. The idea is quite vague and difficult to define. With voice and choice, you are able to complete tangible actions that show clearly what they are and how they work. Ownership requires a deeper look, because it’s a state of being, rather than some task we complete.  ComplianceWhen I think of compliance, I think of a defeated soul. The person has to comply with the rules or they will face the consequence. There is little ownership of the learning, since someone else is guiding the process. CommitmentMany of us think of commitment as a connection between people, whether it be with a significant other, family, friends, etc. Commitment in ownership is sticking with the process until I understand the big ideas and am able to share my ideas with others. ConnectionSome of the most amazing connections occur when we are working with others. This is true of ownership. We own the learning when we experience relevant connections through collaboration. CreationAs we commit to new learning experiences while connecting with others, we are able to innovate and create. This is where the magic happens. We create for ourselves and to help others. Take out that Agency Continuum again and make a goal of where you think you land on the Ownership Continuum. Remember to choose something that you think is a growth area and provide a specific target for this school year. This will make it easier for you to reach your goal. Now that we’ve had a chance to add ownership goals to the Agency Continuum. Let’s examine where most of your goals lie. Do you notice any patterns in the types of goals you have chosen? Here’s an example of one I completed.  Since ownership is so abstract, how do we break it down for our students? Here are some possibilities that you can use in your classroom. Which one will get you started in unpacking the magic of ownership? Create Essential AgreementsOne way to get students to own their learning goals is by co-creating essential agreements. These replace traditional rules, because students create potential learning targets with their classmates. Everyone agrees to these agreements and they create possible consequences for violating these norms. This encourages full buy-in from students, since they create the agreements. Shift our MindsetA difficult task for many teachers is to shift our mindset towards agentic thinking. We love to guide the learning process, sometimes a bit too much. When we make a mindset shift, we see our learners as capable young people who can take ownership of their learning. This is difficult to do, especially now in the virtual world. What is something little you can do to show your students that you still want to shift your mindset? Support Creative ThinkingNot all people are quick on their feet in making decisions. Some require a bit more time to reflect, process the information, and make an action plan. In our world of instant gratification, this can be a huge frustration with our students. I’ve seen a lot of memes making light of students not performing in a virtual world. It’s just as foreign to them as it is for you, especially since most of the sessions are video recorded. Their deeds and words are captured forever for anyone to see. Allow some time for them to create differently in small meeting rooms, so they can get their thoughts together in a way that’s logical for them. Provide Feedback and FeedforwardMore than ever, your students need immediate feedback and feedforward. They are walking in a virtual world of uncertainty, especially our youngest learners. They lean on you to guide their missteps, clear up misconceptions, and provide a new way of thinking about traditional ideas. Also, they need feedforward to guide the next steps of their development. It needs to be presented in a variety of formats, such as verbally, graphically, and written. This will greatly decrease miscommunication as we learn remotely. Give FreedomOne of the hardest things to do is give freedom. We are feeling the heat from our school leaders to get in all of the instructional minutes. This is a defining time in our educational systems. What is more important: compliance or creation? Our actions in the next year will have a great impact on the educational future of many of our students. More than any other time, our students need a little freedom to get their ideas out into the universe and process their implications. Will you give them that freedom? As you can see, ownership requires a deeper sense of being. I think many educators struggle with this part of agency, so they side-step it. They briefly talk about ownership to ensure it’s been “covered”, but they don’t know how to “unpack” it for meaning. Now is the time to decide if you will continue that journey or do the hard part of unpeeling the layers of agency. by Lu Gerlach As you compare VOICE and CHOICE, there are so many similarities that it can be difficult to determine them apart. I think the difference is that students voice how they want to learn and teachers help them co-create choices with the process and product. Choice can be a double edged sword. It doesn’t mean that we allow students to make all of the decisions in their learning without context. Imagine a seven year old child trying to navigate reading chapter books for the first time without guidance from the teacher. They would very quickly become frustrated by the length of the text and increased usage of vocabulary and literary devices. They need guidance and practice with reading chapter books, before they can explore a variety of genres on their own. As an educator, I found the times when I had the most impact on student learning was when I was given the choice to teach according to my own style. When I taught in Dubai at an IB Continuum international school, I was allowed to deviate from the unit planner to infuse my favorite engagements and the tools I found most effective. Each week, our team would meet and share our ideas and resources. We respected each other’s wishes to use what we felt would best meet our student’s needs. But, we always agreed on the same introduction, formative assessments throughout the unit, and the summative task at the end. This allowed us to speak to the same end goal, but our individual journeys were allowed to be different based on student wonderings. How do we break down choice for our students, so it’s tangible? Let’s get out our Agency Continuum from the last episode. We will use it to assess our current usage of choice in our classroom and make goals for this year. Be realistic when making your goals, so you don’t end up frustrated with the process. The Choice Continuum has five stages that students go through. These are fluid stages that go from teacher driven to student driven. Let’s take a deeper look.  I used to think that giving choice boards and multiple options at a station was creating agentic learners. As I look at this continuum, I realize that the learner must be leading the learning in order to reach the halfway point. This requires a lot of faith on our parts to give up the control. If we are eager to bring more choice into our classrooms, how do we do it practically? Here are some simple steps to make it happen. ContentTell the learners the content that will be covered in the unit and have them come up with the ways it will be explored. They will help to co-create the list of most important facts and experiences that need to be studied. QuestionsGet learners asking a variety of leveled questions, so research and learning are a more enriching experience. This will allow them to be more independent and broaden their next of potential topics. MaterialsAllow learners to decide which materials would be most appropriate for their learning needs when acquiring new knowledge. Learners know which items will help them to best grasp abstract ideas. Learning SpaceProvide fluidity in the learning space, so students can decide how to use it best when learning. Allow for flexible seating options, individual carpets, cushions, and other materials for creating student-driven learning spaces. StrategiesChallenge learners to reflect up and investigate a variety of strategies that will support their understanding of new content. Allow them to come up with half of the toolkit. OrganizersCollate a variety of organizers and learning tools together that will support the strategies and content development. Allowing learners to choose their own organizers reinforces independent thinking and transfer of knowledge. FormatEncourage learners to share their understanding in a variety of platforms: vlogs (Youtube), blogs, podcasts, collaboration platforms (Padlet, Canvas), videos (Flipgrid), and so much more GroupsDirect learners to create their own grouping based on task requirements. Encourage them to re-group regularly, so they can maximize the learning from multiple partners. ProjectsCelebrate the learning through a variety of projects and allow learners to guide how it will be shared with the learning community.
Choice opens up the scope of how learning is created, processed and shared with the community. It’s dynamic and allows students to become more involved in the learning process. You just need to have faith that releasing the control will be worth it. by Lu Gerlach Your voice is the one thing that connects us to the rest of the human race. When we don’t have the power to express our voice, it’s devastating. When I began my PYP journey, I moved to Cologne, Germany to work in a dual language international school. One of the things I quickly learned by living in a foreign country was that language defines your social interactions with others. When you don’t have the words to express your needs, you cease to exist. My first year, I struggled greatly, because I missed the social interactions in the grocery store line, starting a conversation with neighbors, and interacting with the culture. With time, it became easier to communicate my basic needs in restaurants, grocery stores, and the check out line. I finally figured out what tschüss (bye) meant after I purchased something or entschuldigung (excuse me) when someone bumped into me on the tram. It was during these times, I realized that my world revolved around my voice...my identity. This is how our students feel when they enter into our classrooms with bright ideas on how they learn best and they are quickly told it will be done according to the teacher’s voice, not their own. Instantly, their ideas, passions, and unique voice are extinguished. Imagine the difficulty as you add language acquisition on top. No wonder so many English language learners strive to be invisible. My experiences changed me as an educator. I became more in-tune to the variety of ways my students demonstrated their voice through the questions they asked and projects they suggested. I re-defined my role as the facilitator of the learning, no sole creator. This is a mindshift and a choice. It comes down to one simple question, “Can my student’s wonderings drive the content I’m teaching? Our response to the question will reflect how our students engage in the learning in our classrooms. Engagement follows in these steps:  Voice is a big part of getting students engaged in the learning process. This is the easiest way to extract ideas from our students through class discussions, partner projects, reflections, wonder walls, and so much more. Now, let us examine the phases of voice and where you currently are in showcasing voice in your classroom. We will borrow the Agency Continuum from our stages of inquiry: teacher-driven, modeled, guided, and student-driven. As we unpack the stages of voice, consider where you are in the continuum and goal. Make a goal on the Agency Continuum chart found on our blog and resources page. Be sure to state the specific goal and why this is an area of focus to ensure accountability. Here's an example.  The Voice Continuum has several stages that we can pass through in order to support agency. Consider where you currently are and where you’d like to be this year.  Have you figured out where your teaching practice lies on the Voice Continuum? It’s okay to be at Expression, because we all need to begin somewhere. The most important part is that we recognize that we need to allow for more voice to be expressed and valued in our classrooms. Here are some possible ways to encourage voice: Everyone's Voice is HeardOftentimes, the loudest voices in the classroom overtake the quieter ones in the room. How do you balance this out? What will you randomize the participation in your class, so all can be heard? A Variety of Ways to Express VoiceMany times, teachers present the concept of voice through writing. How will you expand the concept of voice using: visual art, performance art, music, images, vlogs, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc.? Make Relevant ConnectionsAs you strive to make learning relevant for your students, how can you create a memorable, emotional response? What conditions need to be established in order for your message to be received correctly? How will you make relevant connections that inspire voice? Group DiscussionsDiscussing big ideas in a group can help students to find their voice. What will you use to inspire deeper conversations? How will roles be shared in the group? How will you guide the group discussions? Extra TimeMost of the time, learning engagements are rushed due to time constraints. How will you ensure there is enough time for all participants to demonstrate their voice? How will this be measured? How will students be held accountable with the extra time provided?
Now comes the hardest part. You will need to decide on 1-2 strategies to implement in your classroom to increase more VOICE in your classroom. What will you choose? by Lu Gerlach From a quick glance, it can be difficult to determine where agency begins and inquiry ends, since they are so intertwined in purpose. As you dig deeper, you see their unique roles in developing student ownership of the learning process. Agency is the lens in how we see our students… capable young people who can design their learning course. It frames everything we think and do in our classrooms. Inquiry is the manifestation of agency in the learning and teaching. It requires students to take the lead in guiding the questioning and thinking, which can lead to a sea of possibilities. Agency and inquiry cannot exist alone. They are intertwined with the same purpose in allowing the learner to create their own meaning of the experience. Now, we are taking this journey through the unchartered waters of agency and action. Ready to take a dip?  Think of a time in that you felt truly rewarded by the learning experience. More than likely, you were afforded quite a bit of agency to craft the outcome based on your learning style and you were given opportunities to test it our in your own way. This is agency. Agency has three different components that work in tandem to support and lift our learners: voice, choice, and ownership.  To gauge the level of agency in your classroom right now, let’s do a quick exercise. Voice
Choice
Ownership
If your name popped up most of the time, then your classroom is more teacher-driven than student-driven. This is okay. We all start somewhere. Here is a visual that helped me to grasp the big ideas about agency.  Do you see something that you can implement in your classroom right away? This is the first step in bringing more agency into your classroom. Next time, we’ll go more in depth into three parts of agency and how each component can guide our teaching practice.
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